The American Dream in Israel

An Israeli startup stands before a massive exit — just like the American dream offers.

We live in an age of extraordinary contradictions. On the one hand, we have at our immediate access all information of the world. Whether one wants a Yankees score or the years in which a particular king reigned in France, everything is available with the touch of a screen. Yet, even with so much information available, we still face the task — obligation — to try to figure out what is true and what is not. The recent revelations of Dr. Fauci’s scribblings — on a government computer, no less — show that much of what we were fed by “experts,” “doctors,” “researchers,” “medical ethicists,” and other clowns and frauds was simply lies and misdirection. During an emergency such as the COVID virus spread, it is not unusual for initial reports to be wrong or for information to be partial and in need of more confirmation. That’s normal. What we had was a bunch of credentialed “leaders” intentionally lying to the president and the people in order to control a narrative and the masses. They didn’t want us to know that they were involved in the construction of the virus or that their new mRNA vaccines were not fully safe. They wanted to control what we could do and what drugs we could take. It was disgusting but not surprising. As Erich Remarque noted in "All Quiet on the Western Front," even a mailman reveled in being an unbearable NCO and bossing people around.

There is so much noise about Israel in the press. Genocide! Starvation! Pushing Trump into war! One often does not hear or see the real Israel. So in a story that is becoming more common, an Israeli company stands before a multibillion-dollar buyout by Anthropic. The company in question is named Decart. Apparently, NVIDIA offered $4 billion two years ago, and they turned it down. One founder is 26 years old. At 23, he finished his Ph.D. at the Technion, Israel’s version of MIT. He served in the IDF unit 8200 (called 8-200 by the locals), which is both the premier SIGINT unit of the army and a bigger producer of tech billionaires than Stanford. The company was only set up a few years back, but it apparently can speed up AI activity and, in doing so, save a lot of energy. Another cofounder is an ultraorthodox fellow from Bnei Brak who went off to study programming via an IDF program for that community. He stands before a billion-dollar windfall.

What is the American dream — something that Ben Shapiro has recently coined as “Americanism”? The idea that an American person taking advantage of opportunities and applying himself wisely and virtuously has a shot at success. Israelis love the U.S., and Israelis love to mimic the American ethos. Decart was not a government company, and its success was not decreed by some ministerial committee. Something that AOC, Bernie Sanders, and the rest of the clown car do not understand is that the founders of Decart and every startup in the world (including my own) take on risk: time risk, financial risk, reputational risk, etc. Most startups fail or just get by. Nobody would have run in to save Apple if it had gone south. The flip side of the risks taken is the possibility of hitting a grand slam. The fellows at Decart apparently invented something that is extremely valuable in the modern AI world. As such, several big players in the space have expressed interest in acquiring the firm. That is great for the founders and great for the rest of us who may well benefit from their algorithms and technology. Had they failed, nobody would have returned the years spent or the salaries not paid. In the U.S. and Israel — unlike in Europe — people are willing to take risks for that one shot at the big time. Most fail, but there are those like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg who simply fly out of the stratosphere. We are better off for their inventions, and they are much wealthier for their risk-taking and providing goods and services we crave.

AOC had the nerve to call Elon Musk “a con man.” The fellow has landed rockets straight up, caught them in the air, built self-driving cars and taxis, made revolutionary tunnels in major cities, and implanted electronics in human brains. What con exactly is related to these incredible accomplishments? Had he only built Tesla or SpaceX or the Boring Company, he would have merited enormous wealth and appreciation. That he has done all and more is something that makes him a generational figure, like a Thomas Edison. I always told myself to appreciate Messi and Ronaldo because we wouldn’t see such players again probably for a while. We take Elon Musk for granted. What he has accomplished is more than anyone else of our day. AOC said what she did because she wants to tax people like Musk out of existence. She cannot accept that nobody would have saved Musk had SpaceX failed. He took a risk and became a trillionaire for his efforts. That is the American way. The guys in Israel did the same, and while their exit is smaller than SpaceX’s IPO, the idea is the same: take a risk and there may be a massive reward at the end of the process. You may fail, and there will be nobody there to catch you. But for that 1 percent chance of success, go for it.

A friend of mine once explained why Israel has so many startups, a good percentage of which do quite well. Billion-dollar buys by Apple, Intel, and others are becoming more common. He said that an Israeli goes to school, does his IDF service, goes to India or Thailand, and then comes home. As he has nothing really going on, he decides to make a startup. In the U.S., after one goes to college and possibly accrues significant debt, he is under pressure to work and start making money. Doing a startup involves financial risk and possibly no salary for years, whereas being an employee and getting a monthly check may be less appealing but is guaranteed. Tel Aviv has one of the highest concentrations of startup companies in the world.

I have frequently mentioned that the U.S. dominates the top 40 companies by market value. Whether it is 35 or 37 entries is irrelevant. The point is that most of these companies are relatively young, 40 years or less, and they are the products of startup entrepreneurs. When the Europeans still had companies on the list, they were older firms like Bayer and Siemens. The U.S. has the biggest economy, the most billionaires, 70 percent of companies over $1 trillion in value, and the most startups in the world. This is the U.S., and this is why we go to stores like TJ Maxx and Walmart and see plenty of goods that we can afford. I like to roam such places so as to enjoy the amazing selection and reasonable pricing. I think of the raw materials, production runs, shipping and delivery, and the pricing so as to make a profit but to keep things affordable. AOC and Bernie Sanders would not know the first thing about getting milk to market or fuel to gas stations. They buy the former and tank up on the latter and don’t have a clue about the economic factors involved in making such things a reality. We got a taste during COVID when eggs and other products became scarce: the systems we rely on to enjoy our modern lives are not a given and need a lot of support and investment to continue working.

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