By Richard Goldberg
Monday, October 19, 2026
It’s time for a reset in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
No, not because Israel did anything wrong. To the contrary, it’s because Israel
is so essential to America and too many Americans don’t understand why.
For decades, U.S.-Israel ties centered around foreign
aid. Washington gives, Jerusalem takes, and American policymakers defend the
cost as an investment in a solid ally. That model, however, no longer reflects
today’s multifaceted, interest-based alliance.
Fundamentally, the United States wants to win the century
over the Chinese Communist Party. And we should expect Israel to fully commit
to that victory as well. After all, America’s most powerful adversaries are the
leading enablers of Israel’s most powerful adversaries.
But America will only win the century if it dominates
super intelligence, quantum computing, critical supply chains, and defense
technology. Israel is one of the world’s most important centers of innovation
in every one of these areas — with both a capability and will to align its own
strategic investments for the benefit of the United States.
Americans should want Israel to invest billions of
dollars, both public and private, into SI and quantum research and development
in full cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy, national labs,
universities, and corporations.
Last year, President Trump issued an executive order
launching a national Genesis Mission — a new Manhattan Project for SI, quantum,
advanced energy, and scientific discovery. This summer, the U.S. welcomed Japan
as the Genesis Mission’s first international partner.
Israel should be the second to join the mission, bringing
its own multiyear investment pledge and offering preferential U.S. access to
Israeli innovations. The move would also build on last year’s U.S.-Israel SI
and Energy agreement, which envisioned a joint working group to help make
America energy and SI dominant with Israel’s help.
Notably, Israel’s innovation ecosystem also includes
research and commercial activity in advanced chemicals, synthetic materials,
critical mineral recovery and refining, and the development of substitutes for
scarce raw materials. America’s victory this century will largely depend on
whether it can regain control of the periodic table and a wide range of
critical supply chains.
Israel is already a member of the State Department’s Pax
Silica, a diplomatic alliance aimed at building out an American-led ex-China
supply chain for critical minerals and more. The U.S. should ask Israel to
commit billions more to Pax Silica research, development, and commercialization
— once again with American preferential access to Israeli innovation.
Finally, the 2026 National Defense Strategy recognizes
Israel as a “model ally,” already spending a higher percentage of its GDP on
defense than any NATO ally. After the United States, it’s the most innovative
country in the world when it comes to defense technology. It battle-tests
American platforms and makes them better. It co-develops missile- and
laser-defense systems that help keep both countries safe from threats beyond
the Middle East.
As global demand for munitions puts unprecedented stress
on the U.S. defense industrial base, Israel is investing its own money to
rebuild its own manufacturing lines for ammunition, tank and artillery shells,
and bombs. And as the U.S. military looks for more flexible basing options,
Israel provides air and sea possibilities for ongoing and contingency
operations.
The U.S. defense relationship with Israel is no longer a
one-way street. More can be done to drive that message home. Preferential
access to Israeli defense technology for American warfighters and continued
co-development of missile defense systems should be included on the American
side of the economic benefit ledger.
Moreover, if Israel agrees to expand its own defense
industrial base on its own dime — particularly in the areas where the U.S.
defense industrial base will be most stressed in a multifront war with great
power competitors — the national security benefits for America would be
extraordinary.
Since the total economic benefit of Israeli commitments
to the United States would more than pay for continued financing of
American-made jet aircraft sales to Israel, that financing should continue with
two conditions. First, every dollar must be spent inside the United States,
supporting American workers and strengthening the American defense industrial
base. And second, the U.S. military should have immediate access to all lessons
learned from Israeli use in combat.
America and Israel remain natural allies because we share
some things deeper than a transaction: a common Judeo-Christian moral
inheritance, a commitment to democratic government, and a conception of human
dignity that stands against the forces seeking to destroy the free world.
Radical Islamists want to destroy America and Israel, Christians and Jews.
For tens of millions of Americans, that reality is
enough. For others, it’s not — which makes the evolving national debate over
the U.S.-Israel relationship an opportunity more than a crisis.
Moving from a foreign aid paradigm to an interest-based
joint venture will deliver massive economic and security return on investment
and help guarantee another American century. That’s a U.S.-Israel relationship
every American should support.
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