Israel is one of the most prolific sources of foreign interference in governance and democratic elections in the world today, to a degree easily comparable to Russia and China, vastly outpacing other threat actors like Iran. They frequently (and famously) throw their support behind far-right isolationist and ethnonationalist groups who oppose pluralistic democracy and want to replicate the ‘Israeli model’ of ethnonationalism at home.

Their interference is often downplayed because of (1) American pressure on Israel’s behalf, and (2) domestic pro-Israel lobbies who threaten to sink politicians, civil servants, and governments in accusations of antisemitism for raising it as an issue. This is often a thorn in the side of domestic counterintelligence services, including in the US, where pressure from the ADL and others have been explicitly cited as strong deterrents against holding Israel accountable for both interference and espionage (both military and industrial). That the ADL intervened on Jonathan Pollard’s behalf when he was first tried, and Trump was compelled by Adelson and members of his own Administration to pardon Pollard’s handler on the last day of his first Presidency, are some of the most glaring public examples.

Israel’s reputation as an election interference powerhouse is so significant it has spawned an entire cottage industry of private sector “interference-as-a-service” providers who operate both on behalf of the Israeli government and others, while offering a layer of plausible deniability. That their interference is not only allowed to persist but has become so infamous they now sell it as a private for-profit service just shows how much operational freedom they’ve been granted in democratic affairs the world over.

https://x.com/provisionalidea/status/2034548231204409633

The issue was brought up frequently in the public consultation process of the Canadian Foreign Interference Commission (), yet amusingly and in spite of all of the above, there is no mention of Israel *anywhere* in the seven volumes of the final report.foreigninterferencecommission.ca/fileadmin/fore…

there’s an old truism that a country’s elites have more in common with other countries’ elites than their own countrymen.

this shared class identity and American pining after Arab wealth led the Arab autocrats to believe they were seen as allies and equals. they were wrong. 1/9

https://twitter.com/mazmhussain/status/1967664076756238689

global elites, many of whom are US-educated, have likewise long believed liberal capitalism is sacrosanct to Americans — that doing business and making a profit supersedes all else. if US business interests could be protected, the aegis of Pax Americana would cover you. 2/9

as a linguist, the speaker should know better: it’s not about “speaking more efficiently” (using mathematical terms for prosaic things isn’t more efficient!)

but rather to signal ingroup membership in an emerging elite technocrat class defined by it’s relation to math and code

https://twitter.com/divya_venn/status/1947998998574579812

similar patterns can be seen historically in “legalese” and “bureaucratese” being signals of membership of the governance and managerial classes in the mid-century “organization man” era of large corporations

the fact that many senior Israeli leaders are Americans (and, occasionally, vice-versa, à la Amos Hochstein) is underdiscussed, and a big part of the puzzle

Ron Dermer (Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs), for example, is the son of former Miami Beach mayor Jay Dermer

https://twitter.com/matthew_petti/status/1940551093056164210

Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US and ex-deputy minister for hasbara in the PMO, was born and raised in upstate New York and New Jersey, moved to Israel as an adult, and married SF born-and-raised, now-Israeli Sally Edelstein

One thing a lot of people don't get about Israel is how multidimensional and elaborate the discrimination is.

First is whether or not you're Jewish; this grants you special rights and privileges. Then, whether or not you're white. Then, Palestinian or not. Then, 48er or not.

https://twitter.com/AjAqrabawi/status/1931030658245333203

The issue with @nookyelur's claim that everything rolls up to white supremacy is that it deliberately obfuscates that Israel considers itself a Jewish state, and thereby grants Jews in Israel power over all others by force of law. White supremacy exists, but it exists *as well*.

I get the sense a lot of Americans have a cartoony, Hollywoodized understanding of what life under authoritarianism is like. They don’t get that most censorship is self-censorship; most people just go about their normal, daily lives not talking about the things they shouldn’t. Most people, even one with strong values of right and wrong, are not cinematic heroes. They don’t want to die for the cause. They have families to take care of; food to put on the table. They do what they can, but within reason. And as long as things stay stable, life goes on.

a few threads to weave together in response. bear with me.

note this is my analysis based on currently-available information, and thus a little more speculative and less well-documented and resourced than I am typically comfortable being on here.

and a little harsh (sorry).

https://twitter.com/QuicksilverClay/status/1852037775421276217

similar to the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, the US has found itself on the backfoot with respect to China, with an adversary that appears heavily advantaged against them. they need to move in a fast and focused manner to compensate. this remains true no matter who wins in Nov.

July 6 UNOSAT data of Gaza City; every red dot is a building damaged or destroyed by Israel

there is a bright red dot off-centre in the circled area

that is the location of al-Tabi'in school

as you can see, it was one of the few standing buildings in a heavily-damaged area here's the zoomed-out map showing everywhere in the Strip that has been bombed as of July 6.

Ismail Haniyeh lived in Qatar and was principally responsible for hostage negotiations with Israel

He was the head of the political bureau of Hamas — not its military wing

His assassination by Israel serves to kill the negotiations and score a PR win to defuse domestic tension Haniyeh’s death has negative bearing on the war goals: organizing a hostage release will now be far more difficult, which is what Israeli leaders want

but his prominence allows Israelis to feel like they’ve scored a “win” against Hamas

so they can comfortably pivot to Lebanon

One of the more common replies is that Israel is a decolonized state — not a settler-colonial one.

I am never sure to what degree to engage, since the originators only care inasmuch as “colonizer bad, Israel not bad, therefore Israel not colonizer”

but for those curious…

https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1803637410372129212

Early Zionists like Herzl were explicitly inspired by 19th century European nationalist and colonial movements. They saw — and frequently spoke of — Arabs as backwards savages who would benefit from the “civilizing force” of European Jews. (something echoed to a degree today)

https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1803917977131057407

Contemporary Israel ultimately makes a lot more sense when you see it as a 19th Century colonial movement that got its legs a hundred years too late, only to find itself in a world where colonialism was no longer in vogue

Hence the, “you got to do it, why can’t we?” claims now There’s a certain set of Revisionist Zionists who see the Trail of Tears and other atrocities America conducted against its indigenous peoples until they were no longer a sizable enough population to resist

and considers it unfair they are not allowed to do the same today

After the Jonathan Pollard scandal, the ADL started running interference claiming that any concerns about Israeli meddling in US affairs was antisemitism.

To the point that US intelligence reports worried it was an issue that couldn’t even be discussed — much less addressed.

https://twitter.com/AmiDar/status/1768457494290964789

Some of the subtext here is a longstanding issue of Israel turning around and selling American military secrets to China -- which has happened a number of times since at least 1993.

so much of civilization — from courts to markets, birth to death, depends on records

who are we, where were we born, who did we marry, what do we own? did we study? what, where? all of these are records. proof of life.

and they are being systematically destroyed in Gaza. the systematic destruction of records, the definitional fabric of civilization, is as much a genocidal act as the eradication of people themselves

because as long as records exist, and *someone* is around to go through them, memory remains, and culture can be reconstituted

I think one thing folks miss about the Apple sustainability spot

is that Tim Cook is an industrial engineer and supply chain specialist

and the spot is more about showing other mfgs that aggressive targets are not only attainable, but are now baseline

it is not entertainment if you’re an Apple superfan or heavily steeped in tech, it’s easy to forget that Apple events are *industry events*

and the target audience, by order of importance is:

1) Apple investors
2) Apple employees
3) members of the Apple supply chain
4) competitors
5) everyone else

sometimes I pull statistics for fun just to keep my mental models up-to-date

it's easy to get lost in a bubble and forget what most of the world is like

https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1627172812774334466

I've been reading a lot of old Neurath for work, and it really strikes me as a failure of modern journalism that so much fundamental information about the world is collected but largely unknown

we pile story upon story but provide no context for people to anchor around

I've been finding the "we have the sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips" take increasingly anemic lately.

We have a very narrow subset of human knowledge recorded and digitally accessible. And a lot of opinions and marketing material. So much else is routinely lost. Every time a team collapses, a company folds, or a person passes, knowledge is lost. And not easily-recorded knowledge, either!

Specific, embodied knowledge of how a thing works "in the real world", stored experientially in the liminal space between individuals.

There's a thread of history that goes something like this:

In the late 70s/early 80s, authoritarian management styles were on their way out. They were ineffective, particularly for knowledge work and innovation, and needed to be replaced with more modern approaches. But the computer revolution (which happened around that time) provided an easy out for managers who refused to change their ways. Instead of providing more autonomy and flexibility, the computers could be used to crack down harder, and exert even more surveillance and control.

Org structure is a ridiculously powerful tool, but you typically don't have to think too hard about it beyond basic division-of-labour stuff until you reach ~8 people.

Because math.

https://twitter.com/yashevde/status/1559931506361090049

in an ad-hoc system, information transfer happens informally on a one-to-one basis.

we can model this with the handshake formula,

n(n+1)/2

this is called communication complexity.

simply put, it's the likelihood that information will reach the right destination in one hop.

WHAT PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR KILL COMPANIES?

we set out to answer this question as part of our work a little while ago, did a few hundred interviews, and built out a network model --

which revealed seven interconnected loops!

(h/t to @visakanv who convinced me to share results!) we'll start with a familiar one:

teams stop talking to each other, create silos, and start repeating each other's work.

eventually, the communication environment gets so bad that more severe problems ensue.

"A business' only responsibility is to generate profit for shareholders" is a relatively new idea

it only emerged in the 80s

as a unique byproduct of a culture shift (Chicago school econ)

and

an economic shift (hostile takeovers by pension fund-backed corporate raiders) one of the first and biggest casualties of this shift was employee loyalty

when bosses no longer felt responsibility to employees as a distinct stakeholder class, lifelong employment disappeared and jobs were shifted wherever they could be completed for the lowest possible cost

there’s this idea that culture and technology are essentially the same thing — solutions to human problems. Tech is hard culture, culture is soft tech. I talk about it a lot; I’m a huge fan.

but we can build on this. the next step in this thinking is that we as humans create social/cultural solutions to solve problems we haven’t solved technologically (yet)

over time, we find ways to convert social practice into hard technology, and turn it into a building block for a more complex society.