Category Archives: USA

The Summer of 2021 and the Wars of Today

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Two events separated by three months in 2021 delivered the same message to Islamist movements confronting more powerful enemies:

Keep fighting. Keep waiting. Eventually the infidels leave.

The first came in Israel.

In May 2021, Hamas launched rockets toward Jerusalem and Israeli cities, casting itself as the defender of Al-Aqsa and Palestinian Arab families facing possible eviction in Sheikh Jarrah.

Eleven days later came a ceasefire and the Israelis never moved forward with the evictions.

Immediately after the fight, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research’s June 2021 poll described a “paradigm shift” toward Hamas and armed struggle. 77% of Palestinian Arabs believed Hamas had won, versus 1% who thought Israel had won. And 65% believed Hamas had achieved its declared objectives regarding Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa.

The perceived lesson was simple: Violence worked.

Then came Afghanistan a few months later.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban returned to Kabul, twenty years after the United States had removed it from power. The lesson for jihadist movements was not that they needed to defeat a stronger enemy. They needed to outlast it.

As described at the time in Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave, Hamas met with the Taliban and congratulated it for expelling Western forces from Afghanistan.

By June 2023, Palestinian confidence had moved beyond believing Hamas could win a confrontation. PCPSR asked Palestinian Arabs whether Israel, then celebrating its 75th anniversary, would survive to celebrate its 100th. 66% said no. Only 27% believed Israel would still exist. Another 51% believed Palestinian Arabs would eventually recover historic Palestine and return refugees to their former villages and cities.

Just four months later came October 7.

Nearly three years of war have weakened that opinion – in the near-term. As FirstOneThrough detailed in Palestinian Arabs Turn Inward, But Not Away From Hamas, support for armed struggle has fallen sharply and only 20% of Palestinian Arabs now believe Hamas won the Gaza war but 89% believe Hamas will continue to exist in some capacity.

Weakened but waiting. “Resistance” with resolve.

Which brings the argument from the Taliban and Hamas to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran is making the same wager on time. That it can outlast the United States and send it packing much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

But for the United States, Iran is not Afghanistan.

Iran has called America the “Great Satan” since 1979 and built a regional military network directed against American forces and allies. Iran has developed increasingly long-range ballistic missiles and pursued nuclear weapons capabilities that could threaten far beyond its borders.

Afghanistan did neither.

Iran also sits on the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum consumption passes. Disruption there reaches energy markets and economies around the world.

Afghanistan had no comparable leverage over the global economy.

America had no long-term goals of staying in Afghanistan. It was not going to keep thousands of troops and pour billions of dollars in a region thousands of miles from its shores to make sure girls went to school and women had equal rights.

But Iran is a real concern for the entire western world, both militarily and economically.

The current U.S. war has already achieved important aims by severely degrading Iran’s nuclear, missile and proxy capabilities. But degraded is not finished.

Iran does not need to reverse its losses today. It only needs to survive long enough for politics to change.

And two elections are approaching. Israelis vote on October 27 and Americans vote in November 3.

For Iran, Hamas and the broader jihadist world, those are more than elections. They are milestones testing the strategy of patience.

While the strategic logic for Israel and U.S. to continue the fight may be sound, their citizens may vote differently. And that is what the jihadists are waiting to observe.

Israel cannot leave Israel. America cannot simply walk away from an Iran threatening its forces and allies, pursuing nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, and holding a critical artery of the global economy at risk.

But jihadist strategy places a different bet: Can they wait until Israelis and Americans vote to stop fighting?

The summer of 2021 taught Islamists that they don’t have to win the wars against more powerful foes. Iran has ten more weeks to stall negotiations and wait for democracies to decide whether to pursue long-term strategic benefits or move on to more immediate matters.

Democracies have elections. Their enemies know it.

Will Israelis and Americans turn their elections into the jihadists’ exit strategy.

Who Are the Foreign Country Fanatics?

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Is this the Democrats’ brand now—lying to people?

AIPAC isn’t run by Israel. It is run by Americans who support Israel, just as Planned Parenthood is backed by pro abortion people, not aborted fetuses.

Israel isn’t committing genocide. It is preventing one by trying to eliminate Hamas, the genocidal jihadi group that invaded Israel, massacred civilians and seeks Israel’s destruction.

Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It is a multi-ethnic society in which Arabs are citizens, vote and serve throughout society. Meanwhile, Palestinian Arab leaders continue to demand a future Palestinian state devoid of Jews.

And then there is the claim about Americans losing their lives for Israel. Israel has overwhelmingly fought its own wars with its own soldiers. The American military presence inside Israel has historically been tiny compared with the enormous U.S. deployments around the world – about 110 people versus 175,000 around the world.

The money tells a similar story. The United States has spent roughly eight times as much supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia as Israel itself has spent fighting its eight-front war. Yet somehow Israel—not Ukraine, Europe or the dozens of countries where America stations troops—is presented as the foreign country consuming American lives and resources.

But there is something even more revealing about the Democrats.com post.

The entire thrust of the post was Pearson’s attack on Israel. Nothing about jobs. Nothing about housing, education, crime, taxes or the cost of living. Democrats.com chose his obsession with a foreign country as the reason Americans should see him as the future of their party.

And Democrats.com is not an obscure Facebook account.

Its founder and president, Bob Fertik, has spent more than two decades building a massive progressive Democratic communications network. Democrats.com says its network reaches more than 10 million supporters and boasts that “nearly every Democratic state party has rented our emails for nearly every competitive candidate since 2008.” It sells Democratic candidates access to its activists to raise money, recruit volunteers, mobilize supporters and turn out voters.

Fertik’s network has become part of the Democrats’ election-mobilization apparatus. So it matters what Fertik’s Democrats.com chooses to promote as the party’s future.

Pearson accused an American organization of being “the Israeli government’s lobbyist,” accused Israel of genocide and apartheid, and claimed Americans are losing their lives on behalf of Israel. Democrats.com took that anti-Israel statement, put it beneath his photograph and announced that this is the present and future of the Democratic Party.

So who exactly are the foreign-country fanatics?

Pearson is supposedly warning Americans that they are too consumed with the interests of a foreign country. Yet his showcased political message isn’t about Americans at all. It is about Israel. And Democrats.com apparently found that message so important that it used it to define both Pearson and the future of the party.

If Justin Pearson really is the “present and future” of the Democratic Party, the problem is much bigger than Justin Pearson.

Data Centers, Golf Courses and America’s Environmental Double Standard

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Data centers have become one of America’s favorite environmental villains. Critics argue that they use too much land, consume too much water and strain the electric grid. Communities increasingly fight proposed facilities on environmental grounds.

The concerns over electricity are real. But put data centers alongside another ubiquitous American land use — golf courses — and the environmental picture looks very different.

Golf uses dramatically more land and direct water and requires harmful pesticides to maintain its turf. Data centers consume dramatically more electricity. And data centers produce roughly four times the overall economic impact already – before the upcoming artificial intelligence boom kicks in.

MetricU.S. Data CentersU.S. Golf Courses
Facilities / courses~3,600 operational16,034 courses at 13,975 facilities
LandNo authoritative national total; far below golf~2.3 million acres
Direct water use~17 billion gallons/year (2023)~531 billion gallons/year (2024)
Electricity176 TWh/year (2023)~2.4 TWh/year*
Pesticides / herbicidesNot materialRegularly used on maintained turf
Total economic contribution / impact$926.9 billion (2024)$226.5 billion
Jobs supported5.5 million~1.65 million

*The national golf electricity estimate is older and should be treated as an order-of-magnitude comparison rather than a current industry census.

Start with volume. There is no universally accepted definition of a data center, so counts vary depending on whether campuses, buildings and individual facilities are counted separately. An August 2026 tracker identifies about 3,579 operational U.S. data centers and roughly 4,700 when facilities under construction and planned are included. Pew Research Center similarly reported in April that the country had more than 3,000 operational data centers. (DC Map) Golf is considerably more widespread. The latest National Golf Foundation figures count 16,034 courses at 13,975 facilities in the United States. (American Golf Industry Coalition)

Then there is land.

The USGA has estimated that American golf courses occupy nearly 2.3 million acres. (USGA) There is no similarly authoritative national accounting of the acreage occupied by data centers. Rather than manufacture precision from commercial databases, the relevant comparison is scale: America’s golf footprint runs into millions of acres, while several thousand data centers occupy a small fraction of that amount.

Water produces an even more startling comparison.

American golf facilities applied 1.63 million acre-feet of water in 2024, according to the latest Golf Course Environmental Profile survey. That equals approximately 531 billion gallons. To golf’s credit, that represents a 31% decline since 2005 as courses have closed and surviving facilities have become more efficient. (GCSAA)

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers directly consumed approximately 66 billion liters of water in 2023, or roughly 17 billion gallons. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) So American golf courses use roughly 31 times as much water as data centers directly consume onsite.

Data centers also have an indirect water footprint because generating electricity can consume substantial amounts of water. Golf similarly has indirect resource requirements associated with electricity, fertilizer, chemicals, equipment and maintenance. The 31-to-1 comparison is specifically between water applied at golf facilities and direct water consumed at data centers — not their respective total lifecycle water footprints.

Chemicals produce another imbalance, although one that cannot responsibly be reduced to a current national poundage figure.

Golf courses maintain enormous areas of highly managed turf using fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and other treatments. GCSAA’s national pest-management research confirms continued use of those conventional chemicals while also finding greater use of non-pesticide practices and reductions or little change in reliance on conventional chemistries between its major surveys. (GCSAA)

Data centers, by contrast, do not require herbicides, fungicides and insecticides as a significant part of their core operation. They may have ordinary landscaping needs, but chemicals are not to computing what turf treatment is to golf.

There is one environmental measure where the comparison flips completely: electricity.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, approximately 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption. Its June 2026 update projects that data centers could reach 11.8% of U.S. electricity consumption by 2030, with scenarios ranging from 9.5% to 15.3%. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Golf isn’t remotely comparable. A U.S. Department of Energy analysis estimated golf-course electricity consumption at approximately 2.4 TWh annually, with a typical course consuming about 250,000 to 500,000 kWh and irrigation pumping accounting for 25% to 50% of course electricity use. The estimate is old, so it should not be mistaken for a current measurement. But even substantial growth would leave golf far below the electricity requirements of data centers. (U.S. Department of Energy)

Data centers are power infrastructure in a way golf courses simply are not. But power is being converted into something: economic output.

A 2026 PwC study commissioned by the Data Center Coalition calculated that the U.S. data-center industry contributed $926.9 billion to GDP in 2024, supported 5.5 million jobs and generated $204.4 billion in federal, state and local taxes. (Data Center Coalition)

Golf is also a significant American industry. Its national economic-impact study calculated $101.7 billion in direct economic activity and $226.5 billion when direct, indirect and induced effects are included, supporting nearly 1.65 million jobs and $80.1 billion of wage income. (GCSAA)

America has decided that using millions of acres and hundreds of billions of gallons of water for recreation is ordinary, while communities increasingly treat far smaller amounts of land and direct water used for digital infrastructure as an environmental crisis.

That doesn’t make data centers environmentally harmless. It identifies the environmental challenge they actually present: Power.

Data centers consumed 176 TWh in 2023 and could approach 12% of America’s electricity consumption by 2030. That growth demands generation, transmission and grid investment on an extraordinary scale.

The country should scrutinize where that electricity will come from, who pays for the infrastructure required to deliver it and whether utilities can add generation quickly enough without shifting costs onto existing customers.

Golf uses the land. Golf uses the water. Data centers use the power.

The question for data centers isn’t whether America can spare the acreage or the water. It is whether America can build the electricity infrastructure quickly enough to support an industry already contributing nearly $1 trillion to the economy and will drive the innovation and jobs of the future.

The Jetway Jesus Problem

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Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle once watched 20 passengers board a flight using wheelchairs. When the plane landed, only three needed wheelchairs to get off.

“We are healing so many people,” he joked.

Airline executives and frequent travelers have complained for years about what has become known as “Jetway Jesus”: passengers who seemingly need a wheelchair to board but miraculously walk after landing.

Some of those passengers undoubtedly have legitimate needs. Being able to walk off an airplane does not mean someone can walk a mile through an enormous airport. Disabilities can be invisible, intermittent and complicated.

But the incentives to game the system are also obvious.

Airlines for America estimated that its members were providing about 1.77 million wheelchair assists every month in 2018—more than 21 million annually. American Airlines alone reported more than eight million wheelchair-assistance requests in 2023.

The Government Accountability Office found that some international flights can arrive with 50 to 80 wheelchair requests. More tellingly, airport and airline stakeholders told the GAO that some passengers request wheelchairs because they believe assistance will move them through the airport faster.

Why wouldn’t they?

Wheelchair assistance can come with an attendant through a sprawling terminal, help navigating security, preboarding and early access to increasingly scarce overhead-bin space. The passenger pays nothing.

The airline does. So do the passengers waiting for attendants and chairs that have been diverted elsewhere. And ultimately so does the genuinely disabled traveler whose assistance is delayed because a finite system is overwhelmed.

The instinctive solution is to catch the fakers. It is also perhaps the wrong one.

A gate agent cannot determine whether the person standing up from a wheelchair has arthritis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease—or no disability at all. Requiring medical documentation would create another bureaucracy while inevitably making travel harder for people who actually need help.

There is a much simpler answer:

Make wheelchair assistance easier to get, but less valuable to game.

Europe offers the beginning of a model.

In America, wheelchair assistance through an airport is generally the responsibility of the airline. Airlines commonly hire contractors, meaning multiple carriers operating in the same terminal maintain separate obligations for moving passengers through the same building.

Europe largely puts that responsibility on the airport.

That makes intuitive sense. Airports operate the terminal, elevators, escalators, trains and other common infrastructure. Mobility through the terminal can be another common airport service.

America should consider adopting that model—and then go further.

Imagine the passenger’s journey.

At the curb, anyone who needs mobility assistance gets it. No doctor’s note. No interrogation. No charge. The airport’s common mobility service gets that passenger through the terminal and to the gate.

But a wheelchair is transportation, not a Fast Pass.

Needing help traveling three-quarters of a mile through Newark does not necessarily mean someone cannot wait in the ordinary security process. Assistance should help passengers through security without automatically moving them ahead of everyone else.

The same principle should apply at the gate.

A passenger who needs help crossing the terminal does not necessarily need help boarding an airplane. Passengers requiring an aisle chair, additional boarding time, assistance transferring to a seat or other physical accommodation should continue to preboard.

Someone who simply needed a ride to the gate can board with the appropriate regular group.

That distinction matters because early boarding has acquired real economic value. When airlines charge for checked luggage and overhead-bin space becomes scarce, getting onto the aircraft first means getting the bin. Wheelchair assistance should not be the way to acquire it.

Arrival could work similarly.

Passengers who need physical assistance getting off the aircraft receive it. Where operationally appropriate, assistance requiring an attendant could occur after ordinary deplaning rather than creating another potential time advantage. Current federal rules would need modification before airlines could impose a universal last-off requirement, but the principle is worth considering.

The objective is not to punish someone for needing help. It is to make assistance neutral.

And then measure it.

DOT and airports should publish wheelchair-assistance requests per 1,000 passengers, broken down by airport, airline and perhaps domestic and international routes. If comparable flights routinely generate radically different assistance rates, operators and regulators would finally have data to investigate rather than anecdotes about miraculous recoveries on the jetway.

Most importantly, none of these reforms requires deciding who is disabled. That is the elegance of changing the incentive instead of policing the passenger.

The wheelchair should get that passenger exactly what was requested: Mobility. Nothing more—and nothing less.

Antisemitism As Political Currency

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It is very strange that Sen. Jon Ossoff would make fun of Donald Trump.

Trump has many more followers and, candidly, is much better at insulting people than just about anyone. So it begs the question as to Ossoff’s motivation.

At an Atlanta rally, Ossoff mocked Trump for supposedly not wanting to do the job of president, saying Trump wanted to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace,” referring to Trump aide Natalie Harp. He later doubled down, describing Harp and other aides around Trump as a kind of “security blanket” to make him feel good about himself.

Ossoff had to know that would provoke Trump’s ire and generate targeted insults.

And it did.

Trump mocked Ossoff as a “Pee-wee Herman” look-alike, while White House officials piled on with insults of their own.

But those insults would go out to millions of Trump followers. Ossoff’s supporters and anti-Trump people would simultaneously pile on online. Suddenly, Ossoff becomes the topic of conversation, and people start talking about him running for president in 2028. Indeed, that is already part of the discussion surrounding the episode.

It is all manufactured to improve his visibility.

Ugly. Vapid. And that’s politics.

But what about Rep. Jamie Raskin claiming that Trump manufactured the antisemitism-in-schools narrative?

Raskin seized on a whistleblower complaint from former Justice Department attorney Haley Van Erem, who alleged that the Trump administration’s investigations of antisemitism at Harvard, Brown and Columbia were driven by predetermined political objectives and, in some instances, pursued without sufficient factual or legal grounds. The Justice Department disputes those allegations and stands behind its investigations.

Raskin went considerably further in describing what the report meant. He accused Trump officials of abusing Title VI investigations to attack universities while using “antisemitic discrimination as a pretext and a ‘ruse.’”

That is not a silly swipe at Trump. It is an anti-factual smear about Jews under attack.

Why would Raskin do that?

In politics, it is to generate views and, consequently, power. He might get picked up by Hasan Piker or others who trade in Jew hatred online. He chums for antisemites to get their support for his own personal brand while simultaneously scrubbing any scent of Jew from his person.

That is a whole different kettle of fish than silly insults about Trump.

And it says terrible things about the state of the Democratic Party, that Jewish progressive politicians are whitewashing antisemitism in an appeal to votes from antisemites.

Behind CODEPINK Are Two Fortunes – And Possibly China

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Medea Benjamin is easy to recognize.

She is the woman in pink disrupting congressional hearings, confronting politicians and attacking American foreign policy. Since October 7, CODEPINK, which she co-founded, has made opposition to Israel one of its most visible causes.

The image is deliberately grassroots: activists, homemade signs, street protests and women getting dragged from hearing rooms.

Follow the money, however, and a very different CODEPINK emerges.

Start with Benjamin herself.

She was born Susan Benjamin to Jewish parents on Long Island and later chose the name Medea—the mythological woman who, in the best-known version of the story, murders her own children – perhaps a tell about her intention to destroy America and the Jewish State.

“I know indeed what evils I am about to commit, but my spirit is stronger than my resolves, which is the source of all man’s worst evils.” – Euripides (480-406BCE) in “Medea”

Benjamin is president of Arc of Justice, formerly called the Benjamin Fund, a private foundation substantially capitalized by wealth from her parents, including the estate of her mother, Rose Benjamin, and money from her father, Long Island real-estate developer Alvin Benjamin.

Public filings show the foundation held nearly $48 million at the end of 2022. A 2026 investigation reported assets exceeding $51 million by the end of 2023. That foundation has funded CODEPINK.

But that’s only one fortune. The second enters through another CODEPINK co-founder: Jodie Evans.

In 2017, Evans married tech multimillionaire Neville Roy Singham of Shaghai. That same year, Singham sold ThoughtWorks in a transaction valued at $785 million.

Curiously, Evans, who had previously criticized China’s human-rights record, became increasingly supportive of Beijing. CODEPINK eventually launched its “China Is Not Our Enemy” campaign. And The New York Times reported that more than $1.4 million flowed to CODEPINK after 2017 from two organizations connected to Singham.

Investigators are following parts of his financial network. Congress is examining nonprofits associated with him, foreign influence and nonprofit financing. Lawmakers have separately sought investigation of CODEPINK for possible foreign-agent violations. [see below]

CODEPINK founders Medea Benjamin (left) and Jodie Evans (right)

While CODEPINK presents itself as a grassroots antiwar organization, it is backed by the 0.1% of America’s wealthiest families. Much like George Soros, they are using their wealth to attack the West, and since October 7, 2023, Israel with greater frequency.

Perhaps it is time Americans should look beyond the pink shirts.

When elitists with ties to China and American adversaries, dress up as grassroot movements and start to attack America and American interests, people should investigate and demand transparency.

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Meet the M8: The Muslim Bloc Trump Built

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Eight Muslim countries issued a joint statement Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection of the latest roadmap for implementing President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. They are: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia.

They have no formal collective name. So call them the Muslim Eight — the M8.

Together, the M8 countries have roughly 817 million people and contain forty percent of the world’s Muslims. Indonesia and Pakistan alone are two of the world’s largest Muslim-majority countries.

The M8 was assembled by U.S. President Donald Trump with a specific purpose.

On September 23, 2025, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump convened the leaders and senior officials of these eight Arab and Muslim countries. The goal was to end the Gaza War and build a day-after framework. Trump needed Muslim and Arab countries with street-cred in Gaza to make that happen, as well as a history of operating functioning governments.

Egypt controlled the critical border with Gaza and, together with Qatar, was central to negotiations with Hamas. Jordan brought its relationship with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and sensitive holy sites in Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia brought money, Arab leadership and the enormous prize of possible normalization with Israel. The UAE brought capital, administrative expertise and an existing relationship with Israel. Turkey brought regional power and channels to Hamas. Pakistan and Indonesia brought two enormous Muslim populations and legitimacy extending well beyond the Arab world.

Trump assembled M8 to be directed at the problem in Gaza. Help end the war. Get the hostages released. Stabilize the ceasefire. Keep Hamas from returning to power. Reconstruct Gaza. Support a new Palestinian administration. Reform the Palestinian Authority. Create a workable security structure.

Six days after Trump’s meeting, the M8 jointly welcomed his Gaza peace proposal and committed themselves to working with the United States and the parties to implement it.

When Hamas responded to Trump’s proposal in October, the M8 responded together. When disputes developed over Rafah, the M8 responded together. When Trump established his Board of Peace to oversee Gaza’s transition, all eight announced together that they would join.

Trump had created a Muslim steering committee for Gaza. But soon, the M8 discovered it could steer other things.

By December, it was collectively defending UNRWA, even as Trump’s postwar architecture was establishing new institutions to govern, finance and rebuild Gaza.

In March 2026, the M8 jointly condemned Israeli restrictions at Al-Aqsa Mosque/ the Jewish Temple Mount. Later that month, it issued another statement about Muslim and Christian access to Jerusalem’s holy sites.

In April, it jointly declared that the entire 144-dunam Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound was exclusively a Muslim place of worship and backed the Jordanian Waqf’s authority there.

The M8 began issuing collective positions on Israeli settlements, Israeli sovereignty measures, “settler violence” in Judea and Samaria.

None of that was why Trump assembled the M8.

The Board of Peace was created around a specific Gaza program: maintain the ceasefire, demilitarize Gaza, establish transitional Palestinian governance, rebuild the territory, reform Palestinian institutions and create conditions for a different future.

Yet the M8 now speaks on subjects well outside of Gaza with the institutional weight it acquired by becoming Trump’s chosen Arab-Muslim partner. A coalition created to solve Gaza has become a platform to pressure Israel over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, UNRWA and Palestinian statehood.

Trump gave the M8 a mandate to help fix Gaza. The M8 is turning it into a mandate to lecture Israel.

Israel’s Unicorn Boom Is Much Newer — and More American — Than You Think

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Charts regularly circulate showing the countries with the most “unicorns” — private companies that achieve valuations of at least $1 billion. Divide the totals by population and tiny Israel suddenly jumps toward the top of the world.

But the headline number obscures a three more interesting stories.

Israel did not spend 75 years steadily accumulating unicorns. Most of its unicorn phenomenon is remarkably recent. And many of the companies created by Israelis aren’t headquartered in Israel at all.

Then there is what these companies actually do.

Put those three pieces together — when they emerged, where they are headquartered and what they sell — and Israel’s unicorn story looks like a specialized company-production machine for today’s world.

The Unicorn Explosion

In 2011, only 16 new unicorns were created in the entire world. Israel was hardly overflowing with them either. TechAviv data show Israel produced just four new unicorns in 2015 and nine in 2019.

Then the curve turned sharply upward.

Israel produced 19 new unicorns in 2020 and 42 in 2021. By December 2021, TechAviv counted 79 Israeli-founded unicorns. By December 2022, there were 98.

That means the Israeli unicorn story people now take for granted is largely a phenomenon of the last several years.

“Israel ranked first globally in terms of its number of technology unicorns per capita. As of 2025, the country’s startup scene contained 90 active tech unicorns, and raised billions of dollars in investments annually. These are indicators of an exceptionally well performing startup ecosystem, which forms the basis of the country’s robust technology industry.” – Statista.com

The cheap-money technology boom certainly helped. Valuations soared everywhere in 2020 and 2021. But Israel’s performance was exceptional even within that global frenzy.

Israeli Unicorn Doesn’t Necessarily Mean in Israel

Of the 79 Israeli-founded unicorns counted at the end of 2021, only 33 — 42% — were headquartered in Israel.

The rest were spread around the world:

  • 19 in New York.
  • 15 in Silicon Valley.
  • 5 in Boston.
  • 3 in London.
  • 2 in Los Angeles.
  • 1 in Singapore.
  • 1 in Chicago.

A year later, the ratio was almost identical. Of 98 Israeli-founded unicorns in December 2022, 40 were headquartered in Israel and 58 abroad. Silicon Valley had 24 and New York had 19.

So roughly three out of every five Israeli-founded unicorns were headquartered outside Israel.

That matters when looking at those viral country rankings. A ranking based strictly on corporate headquarters can count an Israeli-founded company as American. A ranking based upon where the entrepreneurs came from can count the same company as Israeli.

Israel is creating companies for a market vastly larger than Israel.

What Israel Is Creating

Israeli unicorns aren’t distributed evenly across the economy. The country’s technology ecosystem has become increasingly concentrated around enterprise software, fintech and cybersecurity.

The Israel Innovation Authority found that these three categories represented 29.4% of companies founded in 2013 but 42% by 2021. By 2022 they were attracting 53.4% of all investment in Israeli startups.

Cybersecurity is particularly extraordinary.

Dealroom currently counts 26 cybersecurity unicorns headquartered in Israel. It calculates that Israel is 9.15 times more represented in cybersecurity unicorns than its overall share of the world’s unicorn population would predict. Tel Aviv alone ranks behind only the Bay Area in Dealroom’s global cyber-unicorn count.

And that is based on headquarters. It therefore doesn’t fully capture Israeli-founded cyber companies headquartered in places such as New York and Boston.

Israel also over-indexes in semiconductors, health technology and medtech, although nowhere close to its extraordinary concentration in cyber.

Meanwhile, the composition of Israeli technology has been changing.

Communications — historically one of Israel’s great technology strengths, including hardware infrastructure and chips — represented about 8% of newly established Israeli technology companies in 2013. By 2022 it was just 1.7%.

” In H1 2025, High-Tech accounted for 57% of all Israeli exports, the highest share ever recorded. The export mix points to a clear trend: 72% software services versus 28% High-Tech industry. This means Israel is increasingly reliant on software services exports, while the High-Tech industry, including the defense industry, has been relatively stagnant.  Israel increasingly went from building the pipes to building the software running through them.” – Israel Innovation Authority

Israel Invents. America Scales.

That industry mix helps explain the geography.

A cybersecurity company potential customers are banks, governments and Fortune 500 corporations around the planet. An enterprise-software company can develop its technology in Tel Aviv while putting executives and salespeople close to customers in New York. A fintech company can maintain Israeli engineering operations while establishing its corporate headquarters in the world’s largest financial market.

And those American headquarters aren’t simply mailing addresses.

In 2023, the United States–Israel Business Alliance identified 88 Israeli-founded unicorns with global or regional headquarters in the United States. Together, those companies employed nearly 62,000 people worldwide.

The available data do not establish how many of those employees were specifically in America, so the 62,000 should not be described as American jobs. But broader state studies show that Israeli-founded companies have become meaningful American employers. In California alone, Israeli-founded companies directly employed more than 14,000 people, with their broader economic activity supporting more than 22,000 jobs.

That economic relationship runs in both directions.

American venture-capital and private-equity firms finance Israeli entrepreneurs. Israeli founders establish U.S. headquarters and hire American salespeople, executives and other employees. American corporations then acquire some of the most successful companies, bringing Israeli-developed technology inside American businesses.

Google’s acquisition of Israeli-founded Wiz for $32 billion provides an extraordinary recent example. Cisco agreed to buy Israeli-founded CyberArk for approximately $25 billion in 2025. Intel’s earlier $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye demonstrated the same model on a massive scale. Three Israeli technology companies. More than $70 billion of announced acquisition value. Three American buyers.

The relationship is particularly important because Israel’s strongest sectors overlap with technologies the United States increasingly considers strategic: cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and advanced computing.

The Israeli and American ecosystems therefore aren’t competing with one another for unicorns. They are often parts of the same machine.

Israel supplies entrepreneurs, engineers, military-trained cyber expertise and dense technical networks. The United States supplies enormous customers, deep pools of capital, experienced executives and the world’s largest technology exit market.

The result is a peculiar multinational organism: Israeli-created, frequently American-headquartered, American-financed and globally sold.

A Very Young Herd

Israel’s unicorn phenomenon is not simply impressive because a country of roughly ten million people has produced so many billion-dollar technology companies. It is impressive because the herd appeared so quickly.

It is unusual because most of the herd established headquarters outside the country that produced its founders.

And it is revealing because the herd increasingly congregated in a few industries where Israel developed extraordinary comparative advantages — particularly cybersecurity, enterprise software and fintech.

For Americans, there is another reason to care.

Israel’s technology success isn’t occurring on the other side of the world in isolation from the American economy. Some of the value Israel creates lands in New York, California, Massachusetts and elsewhere in the United States — as headquarters, jobs, investment opportunities, technology and acquisitions.

The familiar unicorn-per-capita chart therefore captures only the surface. The deeper story isn’t that Israel has a lot of unicorns.

Over the last decade, Israel became very good at manufacturing global technology companies — together with American capital and talent.

Jihadi Protection Bills

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Congress did not arrive at legislation protecting Hamas overnight. It arrived there one bill at a time.

For decades, debates over Israel revolved around diplomacy. Republicans and Democrats argued over settlements, negotiations, Jerusalem, and the contours of a future Palestinian state. Even lawmakers sharply critical of Israel generally framed their proposals around advancing a negotiated two-state solution. The disagreement was over how peace should be achieved, not whether Israel had the right to defend itself against terrorist organizations.

In 2020, as the Trump Administration unveiled its peace plan and Israel considered extending sovereignty to portions of the West Bank, progressive lawmakers introduced legislation preventing American assistance from supporting annexation. Whether one believed annexation was prudent or unwise, the objective remained fundamentally political. These bills sought to influence the outcome of negotiations and preserve the possibility of a future Palestinian state. The debate was about borders, diplomacy, and competing visions for peace.

That bill did not stand in isolation.

In 2019, Representative Betty McCollum (D-MN) also introduced legislation prohibiting U.S. assistance from supporting the military detention of Palestinian minors. On its face, the proposal carried moral appeal. No civilized society wants children caught in war, and few slogans resonate more powerfully than protecting minors.

Yet the legislation missed the point. Israel’s military justice system does not prosecute minors because they are children. It prosecutes minors accused of security offenses, including violent rioting, firebomb attacks, shootings, stabbings, and participation in terrorist organizations. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have all recruited teenagers into violent activity for decades.

Arab minors caught on camera right before they stab Israelis

The debate was no longer centered on where Israel’s borders should ultimately lie. It was becoming a debate over whether Congress should restrict Israel’s ability to prosecute those participating in terrorism.

That evolution became unmistakable after October 7.

The largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust might reasonably have been expected to produce overwhelming congressional support for dismantling Hamas. Instead, it accelerated an entirely different legislative movement.

Arabs in Gaza take the body of Israeli woman they had just killed into Gaza where the crowds pelted her body and spat on her

One proposal after another sought to block the military tools Israel argued were necessary to fight the war. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) repeatedly forced votes to halt major arms sales. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Representative Delia Ramirez (D-IL), and others introduced the Block the Bombs Act. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) sought to impose additional legal restrictions before military assistance could proceed.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen attends a Senate subcommittee on the Justice Departments proposed 2027 budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 19, 2026.

Supporters presented these bills as humanitarian safeguards designed to protect civilians and uphold international law. Their practical effect, however, would have been to deny or delay weapons while Israel was engaged in combat against a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that had murdered, raped, tortured, kidnapped, and burned civilians alive.

Congress was no longer principally debating the contours of a future peace agreement. It was debating how much of Israel’s wartime capability should be withheld while the war itself was still being fought.

And it continued.

In July 2026, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced an amendment eliminating the entire $3.3 billion annual Foreign Military Financing package for Israel. Previous proposals had sought to condition aid or block particular weapons systems. Massie’s proposal went much further. It would have ended America’s regular military assistance altogether.

The amendment failed by a wide margin. But 104 members of Congress voted for it, including 103 Democrats alongside the bill’s Republican author.

That vote tells a larger story than the amendment itself.

Over the course of a few years, the legislative progression moved from opposing territorial annexation, to restricting Israeli counterterrorism practices, to limiting the weapons available to fight Hamas, and finally to questioning whether the United States should continue military assistance at all. Each bill built upon the political space created by the one before it. What once occupied the outer edge of congressional debate gradually became part of mainstream legislative discussion.

The coalition itself is unusual. Rashida Tlaib approaches the issue through Palestinian nationalism. Bernie Sanders emphasizes humanitarian law and civilian casualties. Chris Van Hollen argues for greater legal oversight of military assistance. Thomas Massie opposes foreign aid as a matter of constitutional principle. They arrive from very different ideological traditions, yet increasingly find themselves casting the same vote.

For generations, support for Israel was one of Washington’s few enduring bipartisan constants. That consensus has not disappeared; overwhelming majorities in Congress still support the alliance. But the terms of the debate have unmistakably changed.

Six years ago, Congress debated how American policy might influence a two-state solution. Today, members openly introduce legislation that would limit—or eliminate altogether—the military support Israel says it needs to defeat jihadist organizations committed not to coexistence, but to its destruction.

That is the real story of the Jihadi Protection Bills. Not that any single measure became law. But that, one bill at a time, the center of the American political conversation migrated from shaping the peace process to constraining Israel’s ability to wage war against jihadist movements to its basic ability to protect itself in a deeply hostile region.

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The End of Old Politics: Attention Has Replaced Trust

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Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes revealed something important about American society that had nothing to do with criminal law.

Many people who knew Epstein committed no crime. Association alone was not illegal. Flying on his plane, attending dinners or appearing in his address book did not make someone criminally liable.

Yet many still paid an extraordinary price.

Apollo co-founder Leon Black resigned as CEO after scrutiny over his financial relationship with Epstein, despite an independent review finding no evidence that he participated in Epstein’s crimes. MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito resigned after revelations that he accepted Epstein donations. Others quietly stepped away from hospital boards, museum trusteeships, and prominent civic roles.

None of these penalties came from a courtroom. They came from boards, donors, shareholders, alumni, customers, and communities that reached the same conclusion: institutions entrusted with the public’s confidence should be led by people whose judgment inspires trust. The standard was higher than legality.

America’s moral code was not confined by the criminal code. It asked something more.

Can this person still represent us?

So consider terrorist groups like Hamas. Federal law makes providing material support to Hamas a serious crime. But simply expressing support for Hamas, absent conduct that crosses legal lines, is generally protected by the First Amendment. Americans remain free to express offensive or deeply disturbing political views.

But how can such a person represent us? Why is expressing support for terrorists or protecting them not grounds for cancelation? In a society where just an association with a pedophile can cost so much, how can active expressions of support for murderers and rapists cost anything less?

On October 26, 2023, just weeks after the massacre of nearly 1,200 people and abduction of 251 as hostages in Israel, sixteen members of the House of Representatives refused to condemn the barbarity. Those voting against condemnation were Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Summer Lee (D-PA), Cori Bush ( D-MO), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), André Carson (D-IN), Al Green (D-TX), Delia Ramirez (D-IL) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). Those voting “present” were Greg Casar (D-TX), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D-IL) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). [Those whose names have been crossed out have since lost their seats or retired since the vote, as of this writing.]

The legal question is straightforward. Politicans can say horrible things. But why aren’t more people paying the price of promoting hatred and violence?

The answer comes from a second dynamic beyond trust: attention.

Over the last decade, as Americans have allowed influencers to dictate their worldview, a new question has emerged: will you entertain us?

The attention culture operates on an entirely different calculus than trust.

Consider Hasan Piker. He has repeatedly drawn criticism for rhetoric about Israel and Hamas that minimize or excuse terrorism. He has faced advertiser pressure, platform suspensions, and other controversies. Yet his overall influence has grown. Millions follow him across platforms. He has interviewed major political figures. He attended the Democratic National Convention as credentialed media. He has mobilized thousands to vote.

Controversy did not marginalize him. It expanded his audience. That is because social media does not ask the same question that institutions ask.

Institutions ask: Can this person still represent us? Algorithms ask: Will people keep watching?

Those are fundamentally different moral systems. And America’s youth is addicted to the latter.

More pointedly, politics increasingly resembles social media more than institutional leadership.

Young Americans are less likely to learn politics from newspapers or civic organizations than from livestreams, podcasts, TikTok clips, and YouTube personalities. The people shaping civic values increasingly answer to subscriber counts and recommendation engines, not to trustees or the establishment.

The old model of leadership rewarded persuasion, restraint, and credibility. The new model often rewards performance.

The Roman poet Juvenal warned that a republic could decline into a politics of spectacle. In Gladiator, the same questions are shouted at the crowd: “Are you not entertained?” The crowd is caught in the frenzy, unaware of how the barbarity has advanced another level, a new hero crowned, and a potential new political leader anointed.

Algorithms have perfected that logic. Every outrage becomes content. Every controversy becomes engagement. Every conflict becomes a step towards power.

Whether the personality is Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Hasan Piker, or someone not yet famous, the incentive structure is remarkably similar. Constant visibility. Constant reaction. Constant performance.

And incremental steps towards political power.

RankPersonFollowers
1Barack Obama~200+ million followers. ~ 131 million followers on X and 42+ million on Instagram
2Donald Trump~100+ million followers. 90+ million followers on X, and ~13 million on Truth Social
3Kamala Harris~35 million followers. Mostly Instagram, supported by millions on X and TikTok
4Bernie Sanders~20+ million followers. Primarily on X, Instagram, and Facebook
5Joe Biden~16 million followers. Largely across X and Instagram
6Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez15+ million followers. On X, Instagram, and Twitch
The politicians with enormous following on social media are almost exclusively Democrats

The real question is not whether social media has changed politics. It is whether politics has become social media.

If the next generation chooses its leaders using the same instincts it uses to choose influencers, then America’s civic culture will inevitably begin to resemble the platforms that shaped it.

Perhaps that explains why lawful association with Jeffrey Epstein could end a corporate career while despicable rhetoric can become fuel for greater online influence. The outrage of social media enlists the youth who turn out the votes for the revoluntionaries.

The youth vote propelled Abdul El-Sayed to victory in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary

The greatest danger may not be that one controversial figure gains another million followers. It is that the engine of engagement and vitriol has overtaken our politics, and weakened the country in this fast-changing and volatile world.

The idealism and sincerity of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington belong to a bygone era. Today, we elect Gladiators who entertain us.

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