You know, Herman, I was sitting in the kitchen this morning with Daniel, and he was telling me about this clip he saw. It was a statement from the Prime Minister about phasing out military dependency on the United States. And it got me thinking about how deeply that idea of self-reliance is baked into the DNA of this place.
Herman Poppleberry here, and you are absolutely right, Corn. It is more than just a policy goal. It is a founding mythos. Daniel actually sent us a voice note about this earlier, questioning if one hundred percent independence is even a functional concept in twenty twenty-six. It is a massive question because it touches on everything from the wheat in our bread to the chips in our missiles.
It feels like we are seeing a revival of that old pioneer spirit, but in a world that is far more interconnected than it was in nineteen forty-eight. Back then, the goal was survival. Now, the goal is strategic autonomy. But is there a point where those two things actually start to conflict with each other?
That is the heart of the matter. If you look back at the history of the State of Israel, the doctrine of non-dependency, or Atzmaut, was born out of necessity. After the British Mandate ended and the surrounding nations invaded, there was a literal arms embargo. The United States would not even sell us weapons at first. We were buying old Czech rifles and smuggled planes. That trauma created a deep-seated belief that, at the end of the day, no one is coming to save you.
Right, and we have discussed parts of this before. I remember when we were talking about global military bases, we touched on how hosting foreign troops is often seen as a double-edged sword here. But let us look at the military side first, because that is where the headlines are. Netanyahu says we need to phase out United States military aid as we approach the end of the current ten-year agreement in twenty twenty-eight. Is that even technically feasible given the complexity of modern hardware?
It is a massive technical hurdle. Right now, under the current Memorandum of Understanding, Israel receives roughly three point eight billion dollars a year in Foreign Military Financing. But here is the catch: by twenty twenty-eight, the portion of that money we are allowed to spend on our own domestic industry drops to zero. It all has to be spent in the United States. It is essentially a subsidy for the American defense industry that provides us with top-tier equipment like the Lockheed Martin F thirty-five.
So, if we stop taking the aid, we are not just losing the money. We are losing the guaranteed access to the supply chain for those specific platforms. If an F thirty-five needs a proprietary spare part that is only manufactured in Fort Worth, Texas, no amount of local Israeli genius can just three-D print that on the fly without violating every licensing agreement in existence.
Exactly. And that is why the government is floating a new Strategic Partnership Agreement to replace the old aid model. The idea is to move away from cash handouts and toward joint research and development. We saw a glimpse of this future when the Iron Beam, our high-powered laser defense system, reportedly reached operational status. It represents a significant step toward technological independence.
The Iron Beam is a huge deal for independence, right? Because instead of buying a fifty-thousand-dollar Tamir interceptor missile from a joint venture in Arkansas every time a cheap rocket is fired, we are just using electricity.
Precisely. It costs about two dollars a shot. That is technological independence. But even then, the laser diodes and the specialized cooling systems often rely on global supply chains. If we wanted to be truly one hundred percent independent militarily, we would have to replicate the entire industrial base of a superpower within a country the size of New Jersey.
It is an economy of scale problem. To build a modern jet engine from scratch, you need specialized metallurgy and a demand for thousands of units to make the research and development costs make sense. Israel does not need thousands of jets. It needs a few hundred. We actually tried this in the nineteen eighties with the Lavi fighter jet project. It was supposed to be the ultimate Israeli aircraft.
It was a total heartbreak when it got canceled in nineteen eighty-seven. It was canceled because the costs were spiraling and the United States realized it would compete with their own F sixteen exports. That was a hard lesson in dependency. You can have the best engineers in the world, but if you do not have the capital or the market scale, you are tethered to a larger partner.
So, when the government talks about phasing out aid now, they are really talking about political leverage. When you take aid, it comes with strings. The United States can slow-walk shipments or place conditions on how weapons are used. By paying our own way, the idea is that we buy the right to say no when a benefactor tries to dictate our security policy.
But that leads us into the second part of the question. Even if you pay for the gear, you still need the parts. And even if you have the parts, you still need the fuel. And that brings us to the physical supply chain. We are essentially an island nation. Our land borders are not exactly open for trade.
We really are an island. Over ninety-eight percent of Israel's trade by volume moves through the sea. If you look at the Mediterranean ports in Haifa and Ashdod, or the southern port in Eilat, those are the literal windpipes of the country. If those are blocked, the clock starts ticking.
And we have seen how fragile that is. Eilat's port activity dropped by over eighty percent during the Red Sea crisis. If you are dependent on ships coming through the Bab el Mandeb strait, you are dependent on the stability of a region thousands of miles away.
Right. And it is not just military hardware. Let us talk about food. The early Zionists were obsessed with Hebrew labor and farming. And in terms of fresh produce, Israel is actually quite incredible. We produce about ninety-five percent of our own fruits and vegetables.
That sounds like a success story for independence.
On the surface, yes. But you need water, fertilizer, and seeds. We have mastered the water part through desalination, which is a huge win. But desalination requires massive amounts of energy. And where does that energy come from? Until recently, it was imported coal and oil. Now we have our own natural gas fields like Leviathan and Tamar.
Which makes us more independent, but those gas rigs are sitting ducks. We saw this in June of twenty twenty-five when the Karish field had to be shut down during the flare-up with Iran. If the rigs go offline, the lights go out and the water stops flowing. So, the independence is only as strong as your ability to defend the infrastructure.
Precisely. And then there is the calorie problem. Israel imports nearly all of its grain, sugar, and oilseeds. Most of our wheat comes from the Black Sea region. When the war in Ukraine dragged on, the price of bread in Jerusalem spiked. We are physically dependent on the soil of Eastern Europe to feed our population. There is a National Plan for Food Security twenty fifty in the works, but it is currently stalled due to budget constraints.
So the idea of one hundred percent food independence is essentially a myth for a country this small. We simply do not have the acreage to grow enough wheat for ten million people.
Not even close. To be truly independent in food, you would need to fundamentally change the Israeli diet or develop some sci-fi level of vertical farming. So, when people talk about non-dependency, they are usually talking about a feeling of security, not a literal closed-loop system.
It is interesting how that feeling of security can lead to some risky political choices. If you believe you are independent, you might be more willing to alienate your allies. But as Daniel pointed out, no nation is an island. Even the biggest powers are dependent on others.
Look at the United States. They are desperately dependent on Taiwan for high-end semiconductors. If Taiwan went offline tomorrow, the American military would grind to a halt. Or look at China. They are a manufacturing powerhouse, but they are a massive net importer of food and energy. They are terrified of a naval blockade of the Malacca Strait.
So, true autarky, or total self-sufficiency, is basically a recipe for poverty. The only country that really tries to do it today is North Korea, and we see how that is working out for them. They have the Juche philosophy, which is all about self-reliance, but it results in chronic malnutrition.
Exactly. In the modern world, independence is not about doing everything yourself. It is about diversification. It is about making sure that if one door closes, you have three others you can walk through. For Israel, that means building deep ties with India, Germany, Greece, and our Arab neighbors through the Abraham Accords.
That is a different kind of dependency, though. It is a web of dependencies. If I am dependent on you and you are dependent on me, we are less likely to hurt each other. That is the theory, anyway. But we have seen that theory fail in places like Ukraine.
That is the big shift in geopolitical thinking right now. We are moving from "just-in-time" globalism to "just-in-case" regionalism. Countries are realizing that being dependent on a rival is a strategic liability. For Israel, the push for non-dependency is a reaction to the realization that the world is becoming more volatile.
It is about reducing the leverage that others have over you. If the United States can threaten to stop a shipment of munitions to change your tactical decisions, that is a massive amount of leverage. If you have a six-month stockpile and your own domestic production line, that leverage disappears.
And that is a crucial distinction. Short-term tactical independence versus long-term strategic interdependence. Israel is aiming for the former because the latter is unavoidable. We saw this when we discussed how governments plan for the end. The focus is always on creating those windows of autonomy.
Let us talk about the political side of this. Daniel mentioned countries relying on the goodwill of others for survival. For a long time, the common wisdom was that Israel's survival depended on the United States veto in the United Nations Security Council. That is a political dependency that you cannot build a factory to replace.
That is the most invisible and perhaps the most dangerous dependency. If the diplomatic umbrella folds, you are suddenly a pariah state. No matter how many weapons you make yourself, if you cannot trade and if your currency is worthless, your "independence" is just a fancy word for isolation.
And that is where the rhetoric of the current government gets tricky. If you push for military independence specifically to bypass the concerns of your allies, you might actually be increasing your political dependency because you are forcing them to use more blunt instruments of influence, like sanctions.
It is a delicate balance. You want to be a partner, not a vassal. A vassal takes orders because they have no choice. A partner collaborates because it is in their mutual interest. The goal of phasing out aid is to shift the relationship from vassalage to partnership. But you have to be careful not to overshoot and end up as an outcast.
I wonder if there is a psychological element to this as well. For a nation that was founded on the heels of the Holocaust, the idea of being dependent on the "goodwill" of others feels inherently unsafe.
Oh, it is absolutely psychological. It is the reason we have a domestic space program. Why does a tiny country need to launch its own satellites from its own soil? It is because we want to know that if every other country refused to launch a reconnaissance satellite for us, we could still see what is happening over the hill. We launch our Shavit rockets into a retrograde orbit, against the rotation of the earth, which is incredibly inefficient.
Wait, why do we do that?
Because we have to launch west over the Mediterranean. We cannot launch east because the first stages of the rocket would fall on Jordan, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia. So we take a massive fuel hit just to ensure we have independent access to space. That is the perfect metaphor for Israeli non-dependency. It is expensive, it is difficult, and it is inefficient, but it gives you the keys to your own house.
That is a fascinating detail. It is almost like we are willing to pay a "sovereignty tax." We pay more for the same result just so we can say we did it ourselves. But how far can you push that tax before it breaks the economy?
That is the debate happening in the Ministry of Finance right now. Every billion shekels you spend on a domestic production line for something you could buy cheaper from America is a billion shekels not spent on education or healthcare. True independence is a luxury that very few countries can actually afford.
So, looking ahead, what does a "resilient" Israel look like? Not a "one hundred percent independent" one, because we have established that is impossible, but a resilient one.
It looks like a country that has diversified its energy sources, which we are doing with natural gas and hopefully more solar in the future. It looks like a country that has a "warm" domestic manufacturing base that can scale up in a crisis. And it looks like a country that has multi-year stockpiles of essential grains and medicines.
It also means being a "linchpin" in other people's supply chains. If the world is dependent on Israeli cybersecurity, medical tech, and irrigation systems, they have a vested interest in our stability. Influence is a two-way street.
Exactly. Interdependence is a weapon if you use it right. If you make yourself indispensable to the global economy, you create a different kind of security. It is not the security of a fortress; it is the security of a hub.
I think that is the most important takeaway here. The old nineteenth-century idea of a self-contained nation-state is dead. Even the biggest walls cannot stop the flow of data, capital, or viruses. The goal for any modern country is to manage your dependencies so they do not become vulnerabilities.
Well said, Corn. It is about moving from a mindset of "us against the world" to "us within the world, but with our own leverage." Daniel's prompt really forced us to look at the gap between the political rhetoric and the physical reality of how things actually work.
It really did. And it makes me appreciate the complexity of the task facing the people running this place. You have to satisfy the public's desire for strength and autonomy while navigating a global system that demands cooperation.
And if you are listening to this and thinking about your own country's dependencies, it is a question worth asking. Where does your food come from? Where does your energy come from? And what happens if the "goodwill" of your partners suddenly dries up?
It is a sobering thought, but an essential one for the twenty-first century. Herman, I think we have covered a lot of ground here, from fighter jets to wheat fields.
We certainly have. And it is always a pleasure to dive into these nuances with you. I hope our listeners found this exploration as fascinating as we did.
Definitely. And hey, if you have been enjoying My Weird Prompts and you are finding these deep dives helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Spotify or whatever podcast app you are using. It actually makes a huge difference in helping other curious people find the show.
It really does. We love seeing the community grow. And a big thanks to Daniel for sending in this prompt. It gave us a lot to chew on today.
Absolutely. You can find our full archive of episodes at myweirdprompts dot com. We have covered everything from military history to the future of AI, so there is plenty to explore if you are new here.
Thanks for joining us in our home in Jerusalem. We will be back soon with another prompt.
Until next time, stay curious. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Goodbye everyone.
You know, Herman, I just thought of one more thing. We talked about the physical and the political, but there is also the cultural dependency. The way we think about success and technology is so heavily influenced by Silicon Valley.
That is a whole other episode, Corn. The "colonization of the mind" through software and social media. Maybe we should save that for when Daniel is back from his next trip.
Fair point. One thing at a time. Let us go get some of that imported wheat in the form of a bagel.
Lead the way. I am starving.
Actually, wait, before we go, I wanted to double-check something you said earlier. You mentioned the Shavit rocket launching west. Is there any other country that does that?
Not regularly. Most launch sites are on east coasts specifically to take advantage of the earth's rotation. Cape Canaveral, the Guiana Space Centre, they all launch east over the ocean. Israel is the only one that intentionally fights the physics of the planet just to avoid its neighbors. It is the ultimate "leave me alone" move in space.
That is peak Israel. Fighting physics for the sake of sovereignty.
It really is. Alright, now I really need that bagel.
See you guys next week!
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