From Lab to Life: Lawyers? or Engineers?

Hypothetically: You decide to move to a new country and have two choices. Country A: leadership dominated by engineers. Country B: leadership dominated by lawyers.

Which would you choose?

It is not hypothetical. Chinese leadership has been dominated by skilled, experienced engineers for decades. American elected representatives are dominated by lawyers. China has world-leading high-speed trains, incredible dams, solar and wind energy, amazing highways and world-class factories, dominating electric vehicle production.

The US? A tangle of red tape that has stalled a high-speed rail project between LA and San Francisco for 17 years, decrepit airports, potholed highways, and overall, crumbling infrastructure.

Here are the figures.

In the US: 137 members of the House of Representatives hold law degrees. This is out of 435 total members — fully a third! And 47 of the 100 Senators are trained in law. As of the 119th Congress, 2025-26, there are …10 engineers serving in the US Congress. Ten! Out of 535 elected representatives and senators. Two per cent! The last President with an engineering degree was Jimmy Carter, graduate of Annapolis in nuclear engineering – and he lasted only one term, 1976-80.

In China: Between 1993 and 2012, all of China’s top presidents were engineers. The current President, Xi Jinping, studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University. Up to 80% of mayors, provincial party secretaries and Central Committee members have backgrounds in science or engineering.

China leads in renewable energy, solar panels, electric vehicles, and in manufacturing. It has high-speed rail (4 hours, for an 800 km trip between Shanghai and Beijing). Leadership knew how to initiate, fund and manage large engineering projects (e.g., Three Gorges Dam).

And a small personal story. Years ago, we brought a group of Israeli hi-tech managers to China, on a field trip, and we visited Capital Steel Works, in Beijing…a huge plant employing 80,000. The entire plant, and its workforce, were moved lock stock and barrel 50 kilometers out of Beijing (this was before the Olympics in China), in record time, to cut pollution. In the US, the lawyers would have had the process tangled up in the courts for decades.

True, the New Deal of the 1930’s, powered by FDR, was driven by lawyers. But their vision and goal were not to regulate and litigate, but to create.

And my country, Israel? In the 37th Government of Israel, as of February 2026 – there are zero professionally trained engineers as cabinet ministers. Including in key ministries like energy and environment. In a country where high-tech drives economic growth, and wealth and income and exports.

In the past, Ayelet Shaked (former Minister of Justice and Interior) worked as a computer engineer at Texas Instruments prior to her political career. And Yuval Steinitz, a frequent cabinet minister, has a Ph.D. in philosophy, and once headed the Ministry of Energy.

Democracy fails when engineers and scientists think that it would be insane to run for office, and leave the playing field for the lawyers.