The “startup nation”’s genocide economy
#Anthropic walked away from a $6 billion deal to buy Decart after deciding the Israeli startup had oversold its technology. What it was really being asked to buy though was the run-of-the-mill startup built inside a military-intelligence-to-startup pipeline.
#Decart's founders, Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, met while serving in Unit 8200. Their first conversation, a week after the May 2021 war in Gaza, was about what they called "a classified technological issue." They registered the company in September 2023, and a month later the war started and both were called up for months of reserves. They've since hired the man who commanded 8200 while they were in it. A third co-founder, Orian Leitersdorf, was kept off the public records while he was still a soldier in technological Unit 81, and only named once he'd been discharged.
Decart isn't a one-off. The Marker reported last year that Gil Albaz founded #DataGen while serving in the Air Force's Ofek unit, with his shares held by his father until he left the army. Now the Movement for Quality Government (anti-corruption NGO) is demanding an #IDF investigation into whether soldiers in tech units are quietly involved in startups and venture funds, and trading on military knowledge and connections.
This is genocide economy. Skills and contacts forged in an army documented using #AI surveillance and targeting in Gaza. (I.e. #NAZA), ending up as startups, venture capital, and Silicon Valley exits. Decart's technology (inference optimization) might very well be blur, but more importantly, why do U.S. companies keep looking at this pipeline as if it’s a legitimate dual-use technology? It’s not. IBM punch card machines were also dual use, as well as an instrumental technology in the administration of the Final Solution.
Some sources:
After The Marker's investigations: Call for the IDF to probe soldiers' involvement in tech startups Hebrew https://archive.ph/ImGqZ
Calcalist on the founders and their 8200 years https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hjhzrluuml
Calcalist on why Anthropic walked https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sy77he6oml
Bloomberg on the collapse of the deal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-08/anthropic-said-to-walk-away-from-6-billion-decart-acquisition
#anthropic #decart #datagen #idf #ai #naza #gazagenocide #israel #palestine #holocaust