Greater Israel – Building a multi-trillion dollar economy

Greater Israel—Building a multi-trillion dollar economy

Part 2 of 2

As a matter of important background, the industrial possibilities inherent in the intellectual breakthroughs in machine learning and artificial intelligence have only arisen in the last few years. Trying to create thinking machines and to emulate the human brain goes back to the very beginning of the computer revolution with the work of Alan Turing, John Von Neumann, Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon, John McCarthy, Allen Newell, Norbert Wiener and many others. A concatenation of converging technological events has led to a rapid acceleration of the whole field of AI after decades of nearly moribund and glacially slow progress (the so-called AI winter). This dramatic change in the technical status of deep  learning was brought about by the so-called ‘imageNet Challenge moment’ in 2012 when the power of deep learning  to out-perform other approaches to computer vision was powerfully demonstrated. Geoff Hinton’s AlexNet approach, employing a deep convolution neural network architecture, out performed all other architectures by an unprecedented margin of 10.8%  This event along with a  series of  other breakthrough demonstrations were quickly recognized by the larger computer science community and subsequently honoured, by the 2024 Nobel Prize Award in Physics. The award was granted  to computer scientist Geoff Hinton, the University of Toronto Professor Emeritus and John J. Hopfield, Emeritus Professor of physics at Princeton University. The Nobel Committee cited the scientists “foundational contributions to machine learning, particularly  their work on artificial neural networks”. That the 2024 Nobel prize was awarded, and with such extraordinary rapidity,  to computer scientists, something which has not heretofore previously occurred, rather than mainstream physicists is indicative of the profundity of the breakthrough. The Turing Award, named after Alan Turing, is generally representative of the highest accolade and acme of achievement for computer science not the Nobel Prize. Computer Science we could conclude  has finally reached the status of a true science, on par with physics, or perhaps it is indeed now inseparable from the Queen of Science.

It should not go unnoticed as well that the 2024 Nobel award in Chemistry, was also astonishingly awarded to the computer scientists Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and the computational chemist David Baker, for the application of machine learning to solving one of  the most intractable problems in all of science;  that is the prediction of protein structure from their chemical ‘primitives’ or building blocks; in other words understanding how a given protein structure emerges from their amino acid sequences. Heretofore ‘solving’ the structure of a protein (the nano-machines that  perform all the work that makes life possible) would involve painstaking crystallographic studies, (shooting X-rays at a specially prepared molecular target). Getting this right would often take a life time as was the case for Nobelist Max Perutz ‘s 25 year long solution of the hemoglobin molecule, or the herculean 20 year effort of the Israeli Nobel scientist Ada Yonath, whose determination of the Ribosome structure, involved performing tens of thousands of X-ray studies performed over decades of dedicated work ( it took 25,000 failed attempts, each attempt taking hours of work,  before Ada Yonath successfully crystalized a Ribosome!). Since the number of possible configurations of a protein is greater than the number of atoms in the Universe, the 2024 Nobel Prize winners’ work, essentially automates the process to the extent that a child can now do the same work playfully as part of a game (co-Nobel Prize winner David Baker’s ‘Foldit’ is a multiplayer on-line game that allows anyone to simulate protein folding and to build their own proteins!) These AI driven tools will transform all of biological research and open huge frontiers. Hassabis, Jumper and Baker’s AI driven machine learning models have been described as the “cracking of the code for proteins”, no less significant perhaps than the cracking by James Watson and Francis Crick (Rosalind Franklin not to be forgotten) of the DNA code as the universal basis of heredity . The implications of understanding and modelling  protein structure and function may in fact ultimately exceed the importance of any other development in the biological  sciences. Entirely new classes of proteins will be created that will be able to perform extraordinary functions, revolutionizing medicine and many other fields.

Of equal moment and gravity to these breakthroughs in science and technology and industry is another component that has to be considered and factored into plans for Zionism 2.0. Building a multi-trillion dollar economy, in a small country such as Israel, with a small population requires a radically innovative approach to industrial structure and the employment of native talent. The financial regime within which any economy operates is of paramount importance. All substantial economies, and certainly one that is assuming massive investment related risks, requires a stable and predictable financial environment. Without a stable monetary environment, gains will be inflated away and investors will avoid the marketplace. The closing of the ‘gold window’ in 1971 by Richard Nixon ostensibly ended the post World War Two  Bretton Woods agreement  based on a fixed gold monetary system. The current USD based world financial regime untethered from an independent gold based monetary yardstick has shown itself to be highly inflationary. This framework is not conducive to the massive investments that the world currently requires. This US Fiat based environment  has led to a constant erosion of the value of money, making economic calculation and prediction difficult if not impossible.

The projects contemplated as part of Zionism 2.0 require a radically new financial regime. A development suitable to this purpose has fortuitously been invented. This is the invention of Bitcoin, something seemingly far removed from the breakthroughs in information science and computing. The invention of Bitcoin and the breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are not however entirely unconnected but are in fact deeply related, and indeed share some of the same underlying conceptual fabric; Bitcoin and machine learning are connected by way of information theory (Shannon entropy) and thermodynamics and other parallel evolutionary and adaptive features; the nature of money, is indeed, in the 21st century undergoing a profound transformation and redefinition. This transformation is absolutely necessary to support the large-scale undertakings being put forward by the Trump AI program  and the complimentary projects that are being  promoted by Zionism 2.0.

Invented during the 2008 financial crisis and the near collapse of the global financial order, Bitcoin and its associated cellular block chain architecture allows for trustless transactions to be performed securely across great distances, at the speed of light, and at a near zero transaction cost. Invented by the mysterious and anonymous figure, Satoshi Nakamoto, the invention is a once in a millennium event, comparable in historical significance to the invention of double entry booking keeping in 1494.

Nakamoto’s invention as described in his October 31st, 2008 seminal paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System”. Bitcoin was first used to purchase a pizza on May 22, 2010 from Papa John’s in Jacksonville, Florida  for 10,000 bitcoin (now worth $1.1 billion dollars) has morphed into a network currently capitalized in excess of 2 trillion dollars! Bitcoin has proven itself to be resilient, robust and anti-fragile to use Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s term, meaning that it (ie. Bitcoin) strengthens and improves in the face of challenges, stress and adversity–just as do living adaptive organic systems in nature when facing threats and environmental changes.

The Bitcoin framework provides an intellectual and financial basis that can support the industrial undertakings that will arise in the AI driven economy. In fact, it is a framework that will allow for the decentralization and massive democratization of capital, which will have an enormous wealth effect. Bitcoin and other emerging cryptocurrencies will provide  a powerful alternative  financial structure.  This new financial structure will allow for an entirely new scale of industrial and investment undertakings.  Entrepreneurs around the world will be enabled. On a larger scale, looking towards the horizon,  this financial framework will allow humankind to cross extremely difficult thresholds.  Huge challenges will have to be surmounted to ensure the continuation of our species and our civilization, including the migration of human civilization to the larger solar system and onwards and outwards  from there.

Banking and finance has always attracted the most nimble, the most intelligent and the most intellectually gifted individuals. Although it has often been suggested that the central role performed by Jewish people in banking and finance is attributable to Church bans on usury and such; this is not the case as anyone familiar with the subject knows and can account. In fact, no economic position has been  more sought after and fought over  than the peaks of finance. Jews seized these peaks due to intelligence, accumulated stores of capital, disciplined lending, probity, honesty and having available to them the social networks across which risks could be shared and insured. It was often a tenuous position, fraught with risk and hazards. The stupendous financial burden that Jews carried in supporting the finances and European world financial system in the Middle Ages may indeed have had a evolutionary and genetic  impact, shifting Jewish intelligence a standard deviation or so on the normalized bell curve as the Cochrane-Harpening hypothesis proposes and might have it.  (see earlier Blog post on Jewish intelligence and achievement).

From the Rothschild’s money changing tables in the Frankfurt ghetto and points myriad across Western and Central  Europe, 19th century  Jewry created the global gold backed bond market; a framework that allowed  for the largest single movement and export of capital in human history; a movement that essentially globalized the world economy. It was an astonishing achievement. It is now necessary, indeed imperative, that Israel drawing on a wealth of incomparable historical understanding and experience,  develop Tel Aviv, as a world finance centre for digital cryptocurrencies sufficient to support an industrial and manufacturing revolution . A revolution built around artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, space initiatives and other allied developments in medicine and human health as part of Zionism 2.0.

By boldly participating in and leading these initiatives and projects in AI, and in developing Tel Aviv as a world leading financial capital and the foremost centre in the world for financing startups, Israel can, despite all of its limitations of size and population, create a multi-trillion dollar economy by the 100th year of its birth. A sustained compound rate of growth of 6 percent, which is certainly achievable,  would lead to a doubling of Israel’s existing 400 billion GNP every 12 years.  At this rate of growth Israel’s economy would reach approximately $1.6 trillion dollars in 2048.   Israel’s economy would then support in 2048 the world’s highest per person national product.  Israel’s foray into medicine and other adjacent areas will create immeasurable good will between her and the rest of the world and draw on  deep set philanthropic and compassionate structures immanent in Hebraic civilization. Israel’s wealth and industry will enrich all of its citizens and neighbours and create the basis for true peace.

I would invite all interested individuals who want to participate, or contribute or donate or support in any way to contact me. We plan to establish a website where all the 2048 projects will be outlined. Our plan is not to engage in fanciful schemes but to “build, develop and scale”  real projects (an alternate BDS). Developing a multi-trillion dollar economy in Israel is far less complicated and daunting than the remarkable achievements over the last one hundred and twenty years since the beginnings of the first Zionist conference in Basel in August of 1897, just one hundred and twenty eight years ago. So much has been accomplished and under such difficult and complicated circumstances and through so many endless vicissitudes and war. Theodore Herzl, the peerless visionary, and true master at juggling imponderables,  sustained and kept the entire Zionist project alive in his imagination. He walked onto the World stage, with no money in his pocket, with his back against the wall, and his days numbered. He was determined, undaunted and fearless.  We can do as much with a much better start and with infinitely greater resources. The possibilities are unlimited, all that is required is decisiveness, determination and boldness of purpose.

—

*Dedicated to Naama Levy, who at the age of 19 was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Last seen being dragged from a truck, her fate is currently unknown.  We pray for her safe return.