“Let Startup Nation Go to War”: An Interview with Amir Mizroch
Drift Signal #252
I first met Amir Mizroch during my trip to Israel in 2018, when he was leading communications for Startup Nation Central, a non-profit dedicated to supporting and promoting Israel’s vibrant startup community. Since then, the world has changed dramatically—marked by the global pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas’s attack from the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023.
In the meantime, Amir launched a podcast and newsletter called The Dejargonizer, part of his work with deep-tech startups in Israel. Over the past few months, I noticed his focus shifting increasingly toward defence innovation, with critical analyses of Israel’s preparedness and the IDF’s ability to harness innovation for warfare. Since I was researching similar topics—particularly for my essay on William Perry The ESL Way: A Cold War Playbook for Modern Defence—I reached out to Amir and proposed an interview on his work and defence innovation in Israel. He graciously accepted.
In this candid conversation, Amir explores the surprising innovation gap between Israel’s celebrated startup ecosystem and its defence sector. After 7 October, he began questioning how a country renowned for technological innovation could suffer such catastrophic military and intelligence failures.
He reveals the systemic barriers preventing Israeli tech entrepreneurs from contributing to national defence—bureaucratic inertia, financing constraints, and restrictive export controls. Despite Israel’s reputation as a global tech powerhouse and a pioneer in drone warfare, its military fell victim to asymmetric tactics that exposed this innovation disconnect.
Amir’s message is clear: Israel must “let Startup Nation go to war” by bridging the gap between its civilian tech talent and military needs—before it’s too late. I hope you enjoy our conversation 👇
Hi Amir. Can you tell me a few words about yourself? How would you like to be introduced?
I am a former journalist with the Jerusalem Post in Israel, and then the Wall Street Journal in London. I actually grew up in South Africa and started my journalism career there.
I didn't know that.
I was born in Israel and grew up in South Africa, and I came back to Israel in 2000, just before the second Intifada started. I joined the Jerusalem Post and was there until the end of 2010, through several wars and elections. Then at the Wall Street Journal, I became Tech Editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), which gave me a different perspective. After that, I continued in tech as a communications advisor. I help Israeli tech companies communicate globally and assist global investors in communicating in Israel, serving as that bridge.
Did you grow up speaking Hebrew, or did you learn when you came back to Israel?
I grew up speaking Hebrew, but I never really learned to read and write well. My speaking is fine, my reading is fine, but my writing is awful. I use an AI chatbot whenever I need to write in Hebrew.
What brought you to defence technology?
Before the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, my daily work and interests were focused on deep tech, working with deep tech companies and investors, telling those stories. I did crisis communications and content creation, but my real passion was in deep tech—specifically in de-jargonising it. I tried to take highly technical content, break it down, and rebuild it in a way that makes sense to a broad audience.
I worked on various projects from cyber and quantum to AI, as well as with companies that use physics to solve underground challenges—for instance, businesses that help visualise what's underground when building railways, roads, and hospitals. I focused on physics, science, and deep tech. Then October 7 happened. It took me a couple of months to adjust to living in that new reality.
Personally, nothing else mattered anymore. The only way I could potentially add value, since I was no longer in service, was to try and understand what was happening from a deep tech or technology angle. That quickly evolved into examining defence technology and defence innovation.
From the initial podcast episodes and writing, and the initial conversations I had, the central question was: what went wrong? How could one of the world's most professional armies, with an incredible intelligence apparatus and many smart, capable people, fail? That quickly led me to examine defence, intelligence, and systemic failures, which opened up more questions than answers.
I should add that when people discuss defence tech, it's not just about software, hardware, missiles, and drones—it's also about the weaponisation of narratives, content, communication, and disinformation. All these elements work together.
“How Could One of the World's Most Professional Armies Fail?”
Was it easier for you being in Israel? I know that in Israel, most people are involved with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in one way or another, so everyone has a military connection somewhere. It's easy to speak to insiders, whether on the defence side, weaponry side, or strategy side. Here in Europe, I wouldn't even know where to start—despite my government background, I know very few people connected to the military.
It was very accessible, indeed, because you become connected through WhatsApp groups. The initial post October 7 groups were organised by cities and neighbourhoods, focusing on questions like “Who has guns? Who has training? Who can do patrols?”. Then there were groups about filling gaps where the government had failed—which units needed drones, boots, tactical gear, or helmets.
There were also groups discussing our online presence. On TikTok, Telegram, and everywhere else, we were being portrayed as the aggressors despite being attacked.
Overall, that consumed 99% of my life—WhatsApp groups and bomb shelters. As months passed and things calmed slightly, I began engaging in more focused discussions about addressing the disinformation imbalance and understanding how Israel, a drone pioneer and air defence pioneer, was being dominated by drone warfare on every front.
Communities began forming organically. The Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Defence Research & Development (DDR&D-MAFAT), which is similar to DARPA, started inviting groups of innovators because they needed to improve their approach—they had been complacent.
So to answer your question, it's extremely easy here. You can throw a stone and find someone from intelligence, special operations, or an R&D unit. I myself served in the reserves for years in an information unit.
But despite that, what you described in your piece about Israeli defence innovation was quite sobering and surprising. From what I know about Israel—and I wrote about it several times, here and here—my view was that there was a deep connection between the startup world and the IDF. But we might be misled by the fact that many Israeli entrepreneurs come from the IDF, yet there's no feedback loop in the other direction?
Absolutely. I was shocked by the testimonies I heard from entrepreneurs trying to fix things, prototype, or sell to the primes and big defence organisations. You could also see how slow the IDF was in countering certain threats. That was out in the open.
We're very good at large-scale area defences against Iranian and Hezbollah rockets, but consider the opening shot of the war on October 7: very cheap drones flown over the Gaza border, over a billion-dollar high-tech wall, dropping grenades on the sensor towers and destroying the live feed for the targeting systems. The digital Maginot Line was crippled within minutes—a billion-dollar system taken out by equipment worth a couple hundred dollars. We saw more and more of this asymmetry as the war advanced.
I didn't know I would end up working or writing in this area—I just wanted to understand what was happening. I had been talking about and living in the startup nation for 20 years. This is supposedly one of the most innovative, 'get things done' places in the world. We have great companies and entrepreneurial spirit—again, this is the startup nation after all. But when it came to our actual defence, it was a massive failure. The asymmetry was so vast, the gap so big that it's shocking. I think it's now my mission to talk about this, and try to fix it.
“The Digital Maginot Line Was Crippled Within Minutes”
Do you have the equivalent in Israel of the big defence providers we have in Europe with the likes of BAE Systems and Thales in Europe, or Lockheed Martin in the US?
Yes, we have Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems—three big companies. They're like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the big defence primes. In Europe, you have BAE Systems and Thales. We don't have an Anduril. We don't have a Palantir, though Palantir has an office and R&D people here.
We have some of the world's best startups in cybersecurity—in fact, a really strong bench in cybersecurity, fintech, mobility, Waze, all this stuff. But we don't have any defence tech primes. We don't have any breakout defence tech startups. Only now, in the past six months, are people building these companies. It was astounding to me.
One thing that kept coming up repeatedly, which isn't unique to Israel—it happened in the US as well—is that the relationship between the defence primes and the defence establishment, where the Ministry of Defence or the Army, Navy, Air Force is extremely close. Long-term, big budgets, very much focused on big platforms. But the world changed very quickly. The world really changed with the Ukraine invasion, which was almost two years before October 7.
Yes, early 2022.
Correct. I remember right at the beginning when Ukraine was being attacked by drones, they asked Israel for help with anti-drone and anti-aircraft capabilities. Israel couldn't help—there was a political decision not to antagonise the Russians by helping the Ukrainians against the drones, as we were supposedly really good at stopping drones. No one questioned this.
There were several startups in Israel working on drones, anti-drone technology, and electronic warfare who wanted to help Ukraine, to sell to Ukraine, but were blocked by the Ministry of Defence because of the Russia angle. Two years later, October seventh came, and we had no answers to the drones.
So basically what it means is that Israel lived almost two years thinking they were the best in class in anti-drone warfare, only to realise that they fell victim to them as well.
I spoke to several entrepreneurs who had been working on anti-drone technology, anti-missile, and anti-RPG systems. They had already told the army, as early as 2019-2020, that they were working on prototypes for last-mile detection of incoming munitions. They could use sensors on tanks, bases, installations—everything needed. But the army apparently said this wasn't a threat. They believed if we're going to fight, it would be against big rockets only.
“No One Would Innovate There”
I know that Israeli society is very confrontational, with few people afraid to voice their opinion. Still, is it controversial to make such statements these days? Are you offending people in high places, or are people willing to listen and act on them?
I'm perhaps not as politically astute as I could or should be. I feel this is too important to leave to internal politics within the defence industry. Without doubt, a lot went wrong before October 7, and we still haven't had a commission of inquiry into the full picture. I really hope that one of the things examined is the defence innovation story because things were not prototyped.
We were definitely behind by at least five or six years compared to where the Americans are with defence innovation, with their Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) connecting their military to Silicon Valley. Israeli startups in defence really struggled here. They couldn't get buyers or even arrange prototypes. They couldn't reach the warfighters, the end users. It took ages. Often there would be onerous layers to go through—military specifications, no data shared. All the issues that were happening in US military acquisitions until a couple of years ago.
Then they would want to export, but they faced export controls. So venture capital firms (VCs) wouldn't fund them. No one would really enter defence tech. The best people in Israel never went into defence innovation because you couldn't build a company. You wouldn't join one of the primes because no one would innovate there. So they went into cyber, fintech, health tech, climate tech, and other areas. There was very little happening in defence tech in Israel.
And today, it's not easy because no one wants to take blame. I think it's also difficult because there hasn't been a formal state-level commission of inquiry into the whole story—Netanyahu's government is blocking that. And that trickles down. Obviously, they'll say we need to innovate faster, and there have been more POCs. The DARPA equivalent is opening up. But from what I'm hearing on the ground, it's too slow, and the institutional inertia is returning.
“We Fell in Love With These Exquisite Creatures”
Yes, which is understandable. You spoke a lot about drones and wrote about them and even recorded a podcast about them, which I listened to. My view about drones is that we've all seen the films where there's a drone very high in the sky that drops a bomb on the bad guys, all monitored from the Pentagon. Then a few years back, we saw small drones arrive that anyone could buy and play with in their garden. And then what we realised in Ukraine was that you could use those garden drones to wage war. Can you explain the evolution of drone technology over the years and what led to this massive shift from a strategic perspective?
I'll speak about it from the Israeli lens. Israel, specifically in the military, was a drone pioneer when it came to those bigger drones—the surveillance drones that could spy all over the Middle East at really high altitude. I think that we, as people have said this in the US context also, fell in love with these exquisite creatures. Because you can see so wide and at such resolution, you think you're God. You think you have God's view.
Yes, hubris is not far away.
Huge hubris. In fact, I think hubris is at the core of this problem. The drones were meant as a tool—Israel is a small country, it has to take the battle into enemy territory, so you need to see what's going on in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere.
At some point, it became clear that other nations were doing a lot more with drones, and we saw that explode in Ukraine. Suddenly there were attack drones, drones being used to hit armoured columns, and the pace of innovation on the smaller off-the-shelf drones was rapid.
Remember, even for off-the-shelf drone components, you need certain basic components. Much of the civilian-use equipment was from DJI [Da-Jiang Innovations, a Chinese technology company best known for manufacturing drones and camera stabilisation systems]. Only a couple of years ago, DJI equipment in the US Army started to be restricted. The US Army is now limiting the use of DJI. They're creating their own drones. In Europe, Helsing is starting to create drones at scale. There was nothing in Israel, and there still is nothing in Israel, on the magnitude of manufacturing these so-called mass precision weapons need. We can't manufacture them at scale here.
Overall, I think what we did in Israel was create just a very few exquisite, brilliant drones that we could sell worldwide to India and other Asian countries. The system was geared for this. The defence industry would order these drones costing hundreds of millions of dollars from the big defence primes. That was just the chain here.
I think Israel missed this actual use of drones in tactical asymmetric warfare, as we were static. We had towers, we had big bases that weren't protected against drones. We had big tanks that in 2019 people suggested should have sensors, but they said no, so our tanks were taken out.
I think it took Israel maybe six to eight months into the war to start making its own attack drones and develop its own drone usage. I know this also from a family friend that they started to open training units for First-Person View (FPV) drones. They didn't exist here before. What we saw in Ukraine was something that potentially no other Western army was doing.
Do we already know whether Hamas took inspiration from the Ukrainians?
On the first day of the war, if you were looking at Hamas Telegram channels and Al Jazeera and how they were using drones to hit IDF bases and tanks, and then looked at footage from Ukraine, you could see exactly the same thing.
And then on October 8, when Hezbollah joined the war, they were broadcasting daily. Drones were flying and doing reconnaissance. They had cameras on drones that were hitting Iron Dome batteries, flying into army barracks. For the first time, I think since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel did not have air superiority, even though it's the only air force in the region.
“Flip Gaza Upside Down to Understand”
Yes, quite a shock, obviously for the Israelis, but also for anyone paying attention to these topics. It really took these two terrible examples, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and then the Hamas attack on Israel, to realise that a strategic shift was overdue. Are there any other technologies besides drones that play such a dramatic role in forcing everyone to rethink what defence and attack are about?
I think the other major strategic shock here was the extent of the Hamas tunnel network. Everyone knew they had tunnels. No one had any idea how extensive, elaborate, sophisticated, and impenetrable they were. When you look at Gaza, you need to flip it upside down to actually understand that they have built 500 kilometres—bigger than the London Underground—with electricity, air supply, and internet.
The kinds of technology people started working on and are developing now include a lot of computer vision, specifically from a unit called 9900. They're visual intelligence. When you take video and pictures of Gaza, you're not just looking for obvious things—you're looking for small movements of sand, sand colour over time, power lines that go nowhere, or water pipes, electricity lines, small signs that there might be tunnel infrastructure.
You need to gather a lot of that data, and then you need to train models on it. That's one aspect. Once you know where the tunnels are, you need robots. You need robots to approach them because when you approach them, there are ambushes—a lot of them are booby-trapped.
There's also a lot of physics involved. When I spoke about companies who help property developers, contractors, and public works developers, they use sound waves and radar to determine what's underground. Figuring all that out is another project.
Now, that's on the tactical side. I think there's a lot of work going on in terms of computer vision for identifying faces, movements, how people move to identify targets and to identify hostages. I know now on another level, there is renewed interest in quantum cryptography, which I think everyone is trying to examine.
From what I'm gathering now, people are really interested in the ability to produce on location, whether it's 3D printing or some other manufacturing capability, to quickly produce new components or repair components. So maybe the manufacturing—basically mobile manufacturing close to the forces, very rapidly and securely. Then there are a few companies that are finally starting to build the software layer to manage all these autonomous systems that are now operating.
That's interesting because we've been hearing about 3D printing forever. When I started working in tech, 15 years ago, it was already described as the future of manufacturing—everyone could manufacture at home, et cetera. And it never happened. We didn't see any hint that it would change anything. And now, apparently, because it's about life and death, literally, from a military perspective, there might be some progress.
Yes, and supply chains also. If you're relying on propellers, wires, and batteries from Taiwan for your drone units, and the ships have to go around Africa now, you can't fight an autonomous AI war if you can't produce this stuff quickly yourself. So I'm seeing more of that.
I'm also seeing developments in computer vision. When you're fighting in an urban area, terrorists usually put cameras everywhere. There are webcams. You know those cameras that you have in a car for reversing? They steal those or make them, and put them everywhere. So they can triangulate and see where forces are coming from. You're always going into an ambush in urban areas because the eyes are everywhere.
So how do you identify a transmission, or can you bounce some light that will show you there's a camera there, or there's a lens over there? And then how do you get that in real-time on a Commander's iPad?
You know those films where you're trying to steal something very important, and there are all these lasers, and you have to go this way and that way?
Yes, Mission Impossible type.
That's what fighting in dense urban areas is like now.
Yes. It's all happening. It's as if you have a thousand entrepreneurs and scientists saying, 'We know how to build this', but only now is the military paying attention? Is that a fair assessment of the current situation?
I think the military is paying attention. I don't know if it's enough and whether it's changing enough. I think Israel and the Israeli army and the Israeli defence industry got their comeuppance in time. We're starting to see more innovations and successes, but it's hard to tell just how much the defence innovation industry here is going to grow, if it's going to be allowed to grow, and if it's going to be able to keep up.
You mean by the government?
Government and the big players. Remember, this is a shock, and people want to quickly show that they're doing something. But then inertia sets in again and hubris sets in again. Technology is not going to solve hubris.
“Technology Is Not Going to Solve Hubris”
Do you have a view on what's happening in other countries or regions in the world? You mentioned the US being somehow ahead in terms of being able to procure innovative products or technologies. Can you tell us more? What about Europe? What about China? I should say that with China, I’m a bit confused myself because you read one article that says they're already way ahead of the Americans on such and such, and then the next article will say they are completely off base and would be unable to withstand an open conflict with the US. So we don't really know what's going on in terms of technological capability.
It's hard to say. But I think it's very clear that AI and automation and precise mass production is where war is and where it's going to be. When you look at US allies like Saudi Arabia and UAE, for instance, they are putting a lot of money and effort into AI infrastructure and technology. They're bringing in expertise. That's not necessarily for the military, but they're also simultaneously buying a lot of platforms. What we're not seeing is if the connections are happening, but I assume they are.
I see that Poland is increasing its defence spending and military hardware. I also know that Poland over the past 10 years has developed a lot of entrepreneurial spirit.
Ukraine is extraordinary because they were the outsourced IT administrators for the entire world. They went to war with millions of techies, and they've put up one hell of a fight.
Germany, from what I know, despite all the hype about innovation and drone units and innovation units, it's still extremely difficult for entrepreneurs—and I've heard this firsthand—to get projects integrated and completed within a normal startup timeframe. We're talking about four years for something to go through a cycle. It doesn't make sense.
Yes, absolutely not. So overall, there's no best in class then? Maybe apart from the US with the DIU in the Pentagon, but it still looks small compared to the giant defence budget in the US.
I think if there is a best in class, I don't think there is one at the moment. Ukraine has a very quick innovation cycle when it comes to drones, intelligence, and striking—amazing. But they don't have any ability to establish a big defence industrial manufacturer because it would just get destroyed. I think the Americans, when it comes to the big platforms and the software primes, are definitely moving in the right direction, but I don't know how fast compared to China.
Israel, I'm hoping, will integrate better with the US but also build up its own resilience. We don't make enough of our own bullets and shells.
You buy them from the US.
And the Biden administration showed what it could do if it wanted to hold sales and change policy. So I think that best in class means a couple of things now. You have to rely on your own abilities to produce your own arms. You have to definitely connect your innovation industry with your arms industry. And the one thing we haven't spoken about is chips and semiconductors. If you don't have those, you don't have AI.
Yes, which brings us to the whole discussion about chips being concentrated in Taiwan, built with machines manufactured in the Netherlands, basically. And some things are happening in the US as well, but not much. From an Israeli perspective, are there efforts on the ground to build your own chip manufacturing capacity?
Israel has quite a long history of chip design.
Yes, true. There was this breakthrough in chip design at Intel Israel. It's one of the opening chapters in Startup Nation, the book!
That's right. For chip design, basically, if you look at chip design by AWS, that is Annapurna Labs, an Israeli company that AWS acquired in 2015. Nvidia does a lot of their chip design here. Intel is actually Israel's largest tech employer, for good and bad. Now, Intel is in a really bad state, which is really affecting the Israeli tech industry. But there is a fab here—there is a semiconductor manufacturing plant here, which is strategic for this country.
I'm not sure politically and economically how that works, but if Israel needed to make its own chips, it probably could. Whether that works out with Intel, I'm not sure.
You mentioned in passing that VCs are reluctant to invest in startups in the defence space because they see commercial cycles as too long. You're never sure about the government changing its mind, and the primes are resisting entry from startups. So is venture capital the missing piece? Should governments do everything they can, like Israel once did with VC in general in the 1990s, to force the emergence of specialised investors? Or should we just pressure the military to buy from startups to provide enough capital?
I think it's very difficult to convince investors to put money into something that is already risky, and then go a step further and say it's going to take a long time to develop, test, and get all the right buyers locally. And then if it works, to export it, we're going to need a whole bunch of export controls. So I think, absolutely, the government has to intervene and make it much easier for investors to participate in this sector.
There's a lot the government needs to do. We're starting to hear people talk about the importance of defence, and they're having events and fireside chats, but I haven't seen any real movement in that direction—opening funds specifically for defence tech beyond just promoting the sector. I don't see any other way, because these entrepreneurs have seen firsthand what needs to be fixed on the battlefield. When they go into reserve duty, they're facing these inefficiencies and asymmetries face to face. They come out wanting to build something quickly, but they can't get to those units from the outside.
They need to go through red tape and all sorts of procedures. And who's going to fund them? So there definitely needs to be a realignment now. I feel it's really urgent, but it's not my money. Maybe investors do think it's urgent, but how are they going to convince their limited partners and investors to put money into this? I don't know.
But you have this interesting precedent in Israel, which was the Yozma programme in the 1990s, whereby the government put a lot of money on the table to attract investors and basically guarantee them upside with limited downside. Then Yozma somehow disappeared because venture capital became normalised and it became clear to everyone that Israeli startups could deliver returns. Should the same be done with defence specifically? Is that what you have in mind?
I think there's no doubt that the government and military industries have a lot of work to do to remove barriers to quick prototyping and scaling, and then also address export control, because that's the only way companies and their investors are going to make money.
That is, authorising Israeli companies to sell weapons to other governments.
It's not just weapons, but the software, drone programmes, electronic warfare, sensors—whatever people are developing. The export control on military and dual-use technology is also very onerous.
As we saw with Ukraine, it also depends heavily on politics and geopolitics.
And then you not only have to compete with your local defence primes but also with the American or European ones.
Right. And remember, in places like India, they want things to be made in India. So you need to open a subsidiary there. Or if you want to sell to the US Army, you have to open a large office in the US and hire people there. As a startup, you need substantial funding for that. Making that business case to investors is going to take time.
“Let Startup Nation Go to War”
Maybe let's go to the last question. Policymakers and governments like simple, compelling visions. What would be the roadmap here? What would you tell a high-level policymaker they should do to unlock technology's potential?
I think you have to let Startup Nation into the war. You have about 400,000 people in the Israeli tech industry—core developers, programmers, IT and product people. Many of them have ideas about how to fix the defence innovation challenges here. This country's economy runs on tech—tech exports and foreign investments in tech. Our services industry is globally uncompetitive, but our tech industry represents over 25% of GDP and over 25% of tax revenue. This is the engine of the Israeli economy.
If you don't bring a substantial amount of that into the defence industry, we're going to lose. We're going to lose because the whole world—our enemies, allies, everyone—is able to take things off the shelf, to innovate quickly, to hack things together in ways that can increase the asymmetry further and further. Right now, you need to let Startup Nation go to war, and we're not doing it fast enough. That, for me, is the T-shirt slogan.
And what about the slogan for entrepreneurs and scientists? How can you attract them to a defence world that hasn't been very rewarding so far?
I think it goes back to the first question about what made me go into defence tech. If we don't defend and protect our way of life, our democracies, our families, and our countries, nothing else will happen. The world has changed—we've got to wake up. If you can do something meaningful to protect the West or your country or democracy, and make a living from it—because I wouldn't ask people to do something they can't make a living from—then you should at least consider it.
Yes, that definitely connects with your experience. Israel is different from Europe because you've always lived in this state of uncertainty and aggression from hostile neighbours. But I think the whole world is awakening to the idea that nothing's safe or given anymore. In a way, it could trigger that wake-up call and inspire some to try and tackle that challenge. Thank you so much, Amir.
You're welcome. Thank you for reaching out. I really appreciate it.
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From Paris, France 🇫🇷 (and Tel Aviv, Israel 🇮🇱)
Nicolas
