Last week, a story went live on Politico Europe that made waves in Israeli social media spaces.
How ‘Made in Israel’ Is Powering European Security makes the case that Europe’s push for technological and strategic sovereignty is colliding with a growing reliance on Israeli defense firms. It’s a contradiction many of us in Israel have identified for a while, especially given how politically hostile the bloc has been toward the country in recent months.
But that hostility, it seems, ends at the same place Startup Nation’s booming defense sector begins. The paradox that Europe is growing politically distant from the very country it is becoming technologically dependent on is now impossible to ignore.
The piece, shared widely among influencers and even by the official Israel War Room account on X, opens on a scene almost too on-the-nose: Greek military officials landing in Tel Aviv on the last day of August to sign a €3 billion deal, Achilles Shield, for a full Israeli-built air defense network.
It’s a story I’ve been tracking for a while, through conversations with investors and founders working the European-Israeli corridor directly. One investor active in that space, who has watched European capital and Israeli innovation become increasingly inseparable in recent years, explained how “some of the countries that are our biggest criticizers are still buying a lot of defense technology from Israel.”
The fact is that Israeli companies bring the tech and talent that European sovereign-capital efforts are desperate for, no matter how loud the political criticism gets. As I explained in a feature for JNS in December 2025, more than 1,600 Israeli tech companies now employ over 30,000 people across Europe. Growth is running at nearly 5% a year, concentrated in exactly the sectors Europe’s own strategic-autonomy agenda has flagged as priorities: AI, cyber, and defense.
