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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

If you google "Unit 8200" that is pretty much the reason. The Israeli military pushes their super-smart kids together to be computer scientists and hackers for 2 years - this is essentially the NSA of Israel. Behind every Israeli tech company is a small cadre of unit 8200 grads.

When they finish, a huge network of Unit 8200 alumni who are already rich have a shared experience with these kids, and are ready to invest in any idea these kids have. They have a tight-knit group of incredibly smart colleagues as well, from their time in the military.

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> Behind every Israeli tech company is a small cadre of unit 8200 grads.

This is of course greatly exaggerated. I know plenty of Israeli startups that never had 8200 grads in them, mine included. I actually think that the role of a specific army unit in creating the environment that fosters these startups is really hyped. It's much more of a cultural thing than some random army unit.

Plenty of communities have cultures of entrepreneurship and hard work, though.

Overall military spending can explain a lot as well. A lot of military spending goes to existing companies as well as startups to develop weapons and defence systems which drives innovation in high-tech technology.

Israel spends 5.3% of their GDP on military. That's more than almost any other country in the world and they have spent a lot for many decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest...

I don't think the Israeli defense budget really goes into Israeli startups. The only related fields are drone startups and cyber startups that hardly sell domestically

I think it is more than 5 years on average. Here is the answer to prompt from Meta.ai below: Unit 8200 is an elite intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the length of service for new recruits can vary depending on their role and position. Typically, new recruits in Unit 8200 serve for a minimum of 4-5 years, but some may serve longer depending on their specialization and the needs of the unit. Some roles may require even longer service commitments, up to 6-8 years or more. It's worth noting that Unit 820psilon is considered one of the most prestigious and competitive units in the IDF, and service there is highly sought after by many young Israelis. The unit is responsible for military intelligence gathering, signal intelligence, and cybersecurity, among other things.

Even if the startup's founder is from 8200, the rest are not. I knew one of the execs and the person is very smart. It's just the culture that promotes intelligence. At least in Canada/US there is less emphasis on intelligence and you can see it on the VP level that they are more business-oriented and not necessarily the smartest person in the room, which is fine if you are in North America.

I'm eternally confused as to why other countries don't do this. The Manhattan Project resulted in so many great minds, purely due to the cross-pollination of all those geniuses in such a small place. You'd think any nation state would be gunning for the same advantage.

Manhattan projects don't really work unless you feel that you are under existential threat.

Israelis perpetually do.

Look at all the protests going on at places like Google. There's a segment of the population, especially in tech, that is irrationally anti-military. Somehow people think if we all held hands and sang Kumbaya, all the evil wars would stop, as if people like Vladimir Putin didn't exist.

Think the idea here is that the US supplies the weapons for those wars and we should stop doing that.

Which is a clueless idea, but it's an idea. The US refusing to supply weapons would have, if anything, encouraged Putin to be even more genocidal.

The US does kind of do this through its national labs. They just don't have the thriller-esque story of the Manhattan project to romanticize things and aren't wasting their intellect on maximizing doomscrolling.

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