Daily Kickoff
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Israeli Defense Secretary Benny Gantz isn’t slated to speak at the Aspen Security Forum until this afternoon, but Israel’s military was never far from the conversation on the forum’s dais.
During a session that looked at the military’s ability to adapt to a changing technological and geopolitical environment, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who spoke alongside Rear Adm. Lorin Selby, the Navy’s chief of naval research, pointed to Israel’s elite 8200 unit — a highly skilled tech unit within the IDF’s intelligence corps — as an example of how the U.S. could upgrade its military capabilities.
“If I were focused on what we need, is we need like a digital ROTC, a West Point that’s equivalent to [a] kind of digital and software,” Hoffman said. “We need that going into a service, whether it’s modeled on, you know, Israeli 8200 unit or other kinds of things.”
“The training and education needs to change,” NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, the session’s moderator, said. “Yes,” Hoffman responded. “The whole thing.”
“[Israel is] somewhat isolated. You’re in a challenging neighborhood,” Selby told JI following the panel conversation. “And you guys have figured out how to kind of internally turn out an innovation ecosystem…[Israel has] also figured out how to do that in the military.”
post-trip interview
‘People love Joe Biden here,’ Nides says of the president’s reception in Israel

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog (2nd-R) and caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid (C) bid farewell to US President Joe Biden (2nd-L) before he boards Air Force One to depart Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on July 15, 2022. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Hailing President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel last week as a huge success, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash on Wednesday that the two allies are more aligned than ever on previous flash-point issues and said he believed that the visit had changed Israeli public opinion towards the U.S. president and the current administration. “I think people love Joe Biden here,” Nides said in a phone interview. “I think if you now ask the average Israel, ‘Do you believe that Joe Biden cares about Israel?’ the answer would be 100%, yes.”
Closer than ever: While Biden’s two days in Israel passed with many encouraging platitudes and little controversy, some analysts reflected on the trip as underwhelming in comparison to visits by previous presidents and others pointed out that differences still remain between the U.S. and Israeli on geopolitical matters such as curbing Iran’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons or finding possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nides, however, told JI that on thorny issues where the two allies have clashed in the past, the sides were “closer than ever in conversations,” both in public statements and behind closed doors.
U.S. has Israel’s back: On Iran, Nides said that Biden was very clear that “he would like a diplomatic solution to the crisis… He’s been clear about that from the day he ran for president. But he also said he is not going to compromise; he made it very clear he’s not going to stand by and let the Iranians get a nuclear weapon… [Biden] has been unbelievably consistent on this – yes, we would like a diplomatic solution, we’re not going to let the Iranians obtain a nuclear weapon and certainly we will not tie Israel’s hands,” the ambassador explained. “We have Israel’s back and everyone knows that.”