The joint US-Israeli operation against Iran — the most significant military collaboration between the two countries in modern history — validated a thesis that Protego Ventures had been building since October 7, 2023.
The fund, one of the first in Israel to explicitly target defensetech, had already placed bets on the idea that the US-Israel alliance was evolving from a diplomatic relationship into something more structural. Founders Lital Leshem and Lee Moser imagined a technology pipeline backed by private capital, battlefield data, and a generation of founders who had seen war up close.
“When an Israeli company wants to sell today to the DoD, we have the mutual understanding that we stand for the same values, and we fight together,” Moser said. A former Israeli diplomat and chief of staff to Ambassador Michael Oren, she spent years in the corridors of Congress lobbying for Israeli defense systems.
The Data Point Advantage
“Most of the entrepreneurs in Israel are graduates of elite information units… Add to that the revolution of AI and add to that what the world sees right now,” she added. “You got yourself a superpower. Superpower with data from the battlefield.”
Israel’s defensetech sector has long been seen as a natural evolution of cybersecurity, which in turn was born out of Israel’s need to create robust security measures upon its establishment in 1948. The US-Israel alliance has been strong since its inception.
But what makes this defense relationship different in 2026 isn’t just the joint operations. It’s what Moser calls Israel’s data advantage: 80 years of continuous conflict compressed into a body of operational intelligence that no other country can replicate. “Unfortunately, we’ve [needed] to fight for 80 years,” she said. “And this data can be translated to save people's lives in all aspects.”
Founders in today’s Startup Nation era who build on that data are a different breed from the fintech and cybersecurity entrepreneurs who came before them. They’re coming out of active reserve duty, returning from the battlefield with firsthand knowledge of what the technology gaps actually are. “They know exactly what the pain is,” added Leshem, who was herself at the IDF Southern Command’s Central War Room by 9 am on October 7. “They’re coming with their own ideas and a lot of motivation to grow it and implement it. And it’s actually happening.”
America First, India Next
The loop that battlefield experience feeds into startup formation, which then feeds into defense procurement, is something I have witnessed over the last few years. And it is accelerating beyond the US–Israel axis. From India to Europe, governments and institutions are increasingly looking to plug into Israeli defense innovation, whether through partnerships, procurement, or investment.
One of Protego’s portfolio companies, Xtend, recently closed an $11 million contract in India for its drone-integrated robotics system. The US remains the primary go-to-market, but the alliance architecture Protego is betting on extends globally.
The Information War
One final aspect of our conversation focused on the changing battlefield and how the country’s fights have migrated from land and sea to online. Moser was unambiguous about what she sees as an equally urgent front: the information war, waged through AI-generated content, foreign influence operations, and weaponized social media ecosystems.
“What was real? What was fake? I think what we see today is like the first AI war,” she said. The conflict with Iran has only sharpened that point: deepfake propaganda, coordinated disinformation, and AI-generated imagery have become standard tools of modern conflict, running parallel to every kinetic operation.
Protego is actively backing founders working in what Leshem calls the “cognitive war” space, treating information integrity as a defense problem with the same urgency as drone protection or force projection. “Everything that has to do with the cognitive war or the information war, that is something that we’re seeing a lot,” Leshem said. “A lot of entrepreneurs are going in this direction.”
