U.S. Considering Israel for Innovative AI Center

According to a recent report, government officials in the United States and Israel are considering a joint effort to develop a large-scale research and development campus for artificial intelligence in Israel’s Western Negev desert.

The plan, which is called Project Spire, would create an advanced fabrication and design center to produce, assemble, and test a new generation of computer chips to meet the demands of the rapidly developing artificial intelligence era.

The report in the Wall Street Journal was written by two members of Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. It described how the United States is evaluating three sites proposed by Israel’s government in the Negev for the project.

The facility is said to be envisioned as a high security development, built around a secure perimeter. Safeguards would be put in place to protect the program from attempts to breach the facility electronically and compromise the research being done there.

According to the report, written by Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the institute, and Zineb Riboua, a research fellow there, the facility would have “the security of an American military installation and the creative output of a Silicon Valley hub.”

Project Spire is a follow-up to the Trump administration’s initiative to create a coalition of leading technological nations to advance knowledge of artificial intelligence systems. It’s also designed to create a secure environment for research and stay ahead of nations like China that may pose a military and technological threat to America and its allies.

According to the report, Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg and Brig. Gen. Erez Askal, director of Israel’s National Artificial Intelligence Directorate, signed a joint agreement in Jerusalem on Jan. 16 that outlined the project.

Much of the credit for Israel’s development as a technological superpower is credited to Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology that was founded more than 100 years ago in Haifa. The new facility that was launched by a visit by Albert Einstein in 1924 was the Jewish world’s answer to discrimination by technological universities in Europe and the United States. Today it is among the top 10 centers for high-tech education in the world.

Although Israel’s government funds many of the programs at the university, the support of donors in the United States has been crucial in the growth of the educational center. In the past 85 years, more than $3 billion has been raised by the American Technion Society to build and expand laboratories, support groundbreaking research, and fund scholarships.

Last month, the new Atlanta office of the Technion Society, which is staffed by Amy Arno, brought Reda Mansour to The Dupree in Sandy Springs. Mansour is a retired Israeli ambassador who served as Israel Consul General to the Southeast 16 years ago. He is now the Technion’s director of global resource development and he revisited the community to boost support for Technion in Atlanta.

As an example of the kind of innovative technology Technion has become known for, he pulled from his pocket a small PillCam, which was developed there. It’s a capsule-sized camera that is swallowed by a patient that allows physicians to follow the images that are transmitted as it travels through the body

Technion has been a leading center for life-altering research in health, agriculture, energy, and communication technology and has produced a string of Nobel laureates.

Mansour described how Technion has helped to build Israel, to defend it and to develop it. Nvidia, the world AI leader, is building its largest campus in the world with Technion as its neighbor.

Microsoft built a sprawling center of a half-million square feet of office and laboratory space in Herzliya, six years ago, just outside Tel Aviv, and it has announced it would spend up to $1.5 billion to expand its facilities in the country.

Last year, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, spent $32 billion to acquire the Israel cybersecurity start up, Wiz. It was the most expensive acquisition in Alphabet’s history and the largest price ever paid for an Israeli company.

Intel is the largest private employer in the Israel technology sector. It has a large computer chip manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat, near where the new joint U.S.-Israel AI center might be located. Projects like that are likely to cement Israel’s reputation as a center for artificial intelligence and research.

As the report on Project Spire points out, no nation in the world offers Israel’s experience in intelligence sharing and technological innovation across the full range of AI development. If approved, the site in the Negev would serve as a prototype for a network of similar facilities in other nations that have a strategic partnership with the United States.