Michael Eisenstadt David Pollock How the United States Benefits ...

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time [in late 2011] of three joint projects featuring
U.S. start-ups indicates that Israel now offers the
Americans more than previously.
Israeli companies want access to the U.S. market
and worldwide distribution networks, but the
United States, too, he continued, can now use
Israeli companies to market internationally, “and
the Foundation helps support that.” 18 BIRD, along
with the Binational Agricultural R&D Foundation
(BARD) and the Binational Science Foundation
(BSF)—three binational foundations created
by the U.S. and Israeli governments to spur joint
R&D and funded equally by both governments—
and the tax receipts yielded by their products over
the past thirty years have fully repaid the U.S. government’s
share. Moreover, those products alone
have generated, by a conservative estimate, direct
and indirect U.S.-based production and global sales
of $5 billion and somewhere between 18,000 and
50,000 jobs for the U.S. economy. 19
Despite its small size, Israel is a much soughtafter
partner by local government officials seeking
business opportunities for their cities and states.
Cornell University recently teamed with Israel’s
Haifa-based Technion as its first international
partner in a new NYC Tech Campus, to serve
as a global magnet for technology talent and
entrepreneurship aimed at transforming New
York into “Silicon City.” NYC Tech is expected
to create six hundred spin-off companies, 30,000
permanent jobs, and $23 billion in economic
activity over the next thirty years. 20 Moreover,
top officials from more than fifteen states have
led trade missions to Israel, ten states have
opened trade offices in Israel, and five have signed
agreements to take advantage of Israeli innovation,
involving joint ventures, R&D, and investment,
along with career opportunities in IT, biotech
and medical R&D, defense, and other fields. 21
Around the United States, Israeli firms from
Teva Pharmaceuticals to Tower Semiconductor
to Strauss food products, among others, have
set up major manufacturing plants, with tens of
thousands of employees. 22
For example, Massachusetts hosts nearly one
hundred companies with Israeli founders or Israelilicensed
technologies, which in 2009 employed
nearly six thousand people and generated $2.4
billion in direct revenue for the state. 23 In July
201l, the two governments formally established
the Massachusetts-Israel Innovation Partnership
to reinforce these common endeavors. The state of
Virginia hosts dozens of successful Israeli firms and
licensed product lines; one of the newest arrivals,
the Sabra agribusiness company, in a joint venture
with Pepsico, plans to double its employment to
almost five hundred American workers within just
its first two years of operation near Richmond.
Its sales have increased more than twenty-fold,
to $250 million annually, since 2005. 24 Two other
top Israeli firms in very different sectors, Teva
Pharmaceuticals and Zim Shipping Lines, together
employ more than a thousand Virginians, with
another thousand or so making careers in a wide
range of smaller Israeli companies. 25 And Georgia,
with relatively few ethnic or political links to the
Jewish state, hosts foreign headquarters of no
fewer than fifty Israeli companies. Many of these
are in biotech and related fields, including Given
Imaging, Mazor Surgical Technologies, Alpha
Omega, and Veritas Venture Partners. 26
In short, while Israel’s overall contribution to
America’s economic strength is relatively modest,
it is often concentrated in sectors that are key to
revitalizing the U.S. economy and restoring its
competitiveness overseas.
Cyber/Information Technology
The cyber domain may well be the most dynamic,
strategically vital, and promising area of U.S.-Israel
civilian and military cooperation. There are few
areas of modern life that have not been touched by
computers, information technology, and the cyber
revolution. Power grids, mass communication,
banking and finance, transportation, and nearly all
economic activity depend on information technology
and computers. With this dependence, however,
comes vulnerability. The reliance of nearly
34 sTraTegic rePorT 7 | eisensTadT, Pollock