A founding partner at Aurelius Capital, a defense-led dual-use technology fund, has publicly argued that Israel must accelerate its investment in physical AI, framing the technology as a national security imperative. The opinion piece, published in The Jerusalem Post, directly links the development and deployment of autonomous systems to the concentration of military advantage and, by extension, capital.
The article describes physical AI as intelligence embedded in machines that move, perceive, and act in the real world, including autonomous drones, ground robots, and naval surveillance systems. It asserts that the output of this technology is motion, force, and presence, making it a critical national security issue.
War Profiteers and State Subsidies
The author, whose fund invests in Israeli founders across cybersecurity, autonomous systems, drones, and communications, highlights existing proof of concept within the Israeli military apparatus. The IDF is characterized as one of the world’s most demanding operational test environments for autonomous systems. Elbit’s Hermes drones have operated in contested airspace for over a decade, while Rafael’s autonomous weapon stations guard Israel’s borders. The targeting logic of Iron Dome, described as an early form of physical AI, is credited with saving Israeli lives, having been tested and iterated under real conditions.
The piece notes that the money flowing into companies like Anduril and Shield AI reflects a consensus that physical AI will determine the next decade of military advantage. This capital accumulation is directly tied to the state’s demand for advanced weaponry and surveillance tools.
The Global Market for Automated Violence
The war in Ukraine is cited as a live proving ground for physical AI at scale, demonstrating how autonomous systems can be battlefield-decisive even for smaller, outgunned forces. Ukraine’s use of FPV drones coordinated by AI-assisted targeting is mentioned, alongside Russia’s adaptation and the mainstreaming of autonomous loitering munitions through Iran-supplied Shahed drones.
The question for military strategists in Tel Aviv, Washington, and Beijing is not whether autonomous systems matter, but how quickly they can be fielded, in what numbers, and with what reliability. Israel’s October 7 experience is presented as a catalyst for urgent rethinking of border sensing, autonomous alert systems, and human-machine teaming to enable faster responses than purely manual systems.
The United States is reportedly moving with unusual urgency, with the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative explicitly aiming for thousands of attritable and expendable autonomous platforms deployed at scale. DARPA has been laying the scientific foundation for autonomous ground vehicles and collaborative combat aircraft for years, further solidifying the state’s role in subsidizing the research and development that ultimately benefits private defense contractors.
Engineering for Empire
The article emphasizes that a generation of Israeli engineers, forged by history, has built systems that had to work under critical conditions. Unit 8200 and the broader intelligence community are credited with producing AI and sensing talent that understands operational constraints most engineers globally have not encountered. This pipeline of engineers transitioning from military service to private companies is identified as one of Israel’s most underappreciated strategic assets, directly feeding the defense technology sector.
The U.S. trajectory is deemed significant for interoperability, ensuring Israeli systems can integrate with American platforms in conflict scenarios, and for competition, as American companies rapidly enter markets where Israeli firms historically held an edge. While hardware and talent exist, the software stack for scalable and reliable physical AI remains underdeveloped, including autonomy software for GPS-denied environments, simulation platforms, and sensor fusion systems for degraded conditions.
According to the opinion piece, the next wave of Israeli defense-tech companies must emerge in these areas, developing smarter drones and systems capable of operating in communications blackouts, making decisions at the edge, and meeting validation standards for the IDF and NATO partners. The author concludes that countries that first solve reliable autonomous systems will gain a military advantage that traditional defense spending cannot easily offset, and that Israel possesses the operational history, engineering talent, and threat environment to lead, but that this window for capital accumulation will not remain open indefinitely.