Why does Europe buy Ukraine's drones, not Israel's? | Michael Cukierman
The Defense and Tech PodcastShow Notes
From commanding an IDF electronic-warfare unit to brokering defense-tech M&A, Michael Cukierman explains the $1 billion drone threat that no jammer can stop.
In this episode of The Defense and Tech Podcast, host Anna Ahronheim sits down with Michael Cukierman, Partner and Head of the Defense Division at Cukierman & Co. Investment House, for a rare view from both the battlefield and the boardroom. Cukierman traces how the drone threat mutated in real time: from commercial quadcopters bought off eBay and Amazon, to 3D-printed DIY drones, to today's fiber-optic drones that carry no RF signal to jam. "The threats in the battlefield change on a monthly basis," he says, and each shift opens a new race for a solution: "There is a $1 billion race to find the solution," and this time it has to be kinetic.
He also breaks down the layered logic of counter-drone defense, detection, identification, decision, interception, and the layer he thinks companies keep underestimating: command and control. Then the conversation turns to money and markets: why European buyers still look to Ukraine over Israel, how an Israeli firm went head-to-head with a Ukrainian company in a Rheinmetall tender, why manufacturing (not technology) is the real bottleneck to scaling, and how defense sensors end up as medical hearing aids. Looking to 2030, Cukierman argues the front line will be largely automated, with human operators pushed to the rear.
What makes this interview different is the dual vantage point: Cukierman has operated counter-drone systems in the field and now advises on the deals that take them global as part of the M&A Worldwide alliance. For anyone tracking defense-tech investment, the drone-vs-counter-drone arms race, or Israel's place in a shifting global market, it's a grounded, jargon-tested read on where the money and the threats are heading next.
More from The Defense and Tech Podcast
European governments condemn Israel publicly while their purchase orders arrive quietly, says IL Ventures co-founder Yoni Heilbronn, and interests, not politics, now decide everything.
Israel is winning on every front, and Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner says the next war is already being armed inside Israel's own borders. In his first weeks as chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF–HaBithonistim), Winner sits down with Anna Ahronheim to argue that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas have all been militarily defeated, and that the threat Israel is least prepared for is domestic: smuggled illegal weapons, organized crime in Arab society, and an armed Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria that could turn its guns the day Mahmoud Abbas dies.
Quantum computing has no dominant player yet, and that, argues deep tech investor Zach Fagan, is exactly why Israel's next category-defining company may come from it.
Since October 7, Israel's defense R&D directorate has pushed weapons from concept to combat in weeks, and now works with more than 300 startups. Col. Yishai Cohen explains how.
Former NSA Director and US Cyber Command chief Admiral Mike Rogers warns that the Iran ceasefire has resolved none of the underlying threats — missiles, proxies, or the nuclear program — and that Iran's Revolutionary Guard is now more powerful and more aggressive than before the conflict began.