5.5 Middle East — Gardens of the Desert

Gardens of the Desert: How Necessity Made Innovation Bloom in the Middle East

No one expects flowers in the desert. Yet that is where they grow fastest — when the rain finally comes.

In 1954, a six-year-old country undertook to build a computer. Israel had just emerged from its war of independence. The borders were hostile. The economy fragile. The advisory committee included Albert Einstein — skeptical — and John von Neumann — enthusiastic. Some candidates had lost their diplomas in the Holocaust. In 1955, the WEIZAC executed its first calculation.

Lotfi Zadeh was born in Baku, grew up in Tehran, emigrated to the United States. In 1965, he invented fuzzy logic — that way of representing vague concepts that humans handle intuitively. Americans were skeptical. The Japanese seized upon it. Today it is in your air conditioners, washing machines, cars.

Unit 8200 — the Israeli equivalent of the NSA — became, without intending to, the world's greatest startup school. Gil Shwed built the first firewall there. Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk — so many cybersecurity giants founded by its veterans.

ICQ — "I Seek You" — was born in a Tel Aviv apartment in 1996. Four young Israelis invented instant messaging. AOL bought it for four hundred million dollars.

Waze and Mobileye revolutionized navigation and autonomous driving. The "Startup Nation" exported eleven billion dollars in cybersecurity in 2021.

The desert has bloomed. Necessity became invention.