Israel’s security depends on tech education - opinion

In an era in which artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, and advanced semiconductors determine the outcome of wars, the link between scientific education and national security has become direct and immediate.

For Israel, whose security rests on sustained technological superiority over multiple adversaries, the question of what children learn in eighth grade is not an educational debate; it is a strategic question of national survival: Who will develop Israel’s AI systems, chips, and defense platforms in 2040?

Eighth grade matters for three fundamental reasons.

That decision directly determines eligibility for elite military units, both combat and technological, and later access to academic pathways in engineering, computer science, and physics. In practice, it shapes the future leadership spine of Israel’s scientific and technological ecosystem.

Second, eighth grade is the focus of the TIMSS assessments, the leading international benchmark for mathematics and science achievement.

The most recent results, from 2023, show a dramatic 32-point decline in mathematics and science achievement, among the steepest drops recorded globally.

Third, there is the strategic time horizon. A student in eighth-grade in 2025 will complete high school in 2028-2029, join the IDF in 2029–2030, complete service around 2034-2035, and reach academia and industry by 2040.

The engineers and researchers who will design Israel’s critical defense systems in the 2040s are in today’s middle school classrooms. TIMSS 2023 suggests we are losing them.

The gap between Israel’s global reputation as a technological powerhouse and the state of its education pipeline is no longer theoretical. It is a first-order national security risk.

Israel leads the world in civilian research and development investment as a share of GDP, reaching 6.35% in 2023, well above South Korea, the US, and the OECD average. Yet beneath this impressive headline lie warning signs. In 2024, Israel’s hi-tech sector generated approximately NIS 317 billion, accounting for 17.3% of GDP, with no real growth for a second consecutive year.

Hi-tech exports exceeded $78 billion, representing over half of Israel’s total exports, and by mid-2025, reached 57% of all exports.

The most troubling indicator, however, is employment.

Hi-tech employment has stagnated at roughly 11.5 percent of the national workforce for three consecutive years. Approximately 403,000 people were employed in Israeli hi-tech in the first half of 2025, yet research and development positions declined by 6.5% year over year.

Since 2023, employment growth in the sector has fallen below two percent annually, compared to more than five percent for most of the previous decade.

The security implication is clear. An entire economy and with it an advanced defense industry, rests on less than 12% of the workforce. When that base hits a ceiling just as the global race in AI and semiconductors accelerates, military capability also hits a ceiling. This is a strategic vulnerability.

The results of TIMSS 2023 point to a sharp decline in the capabilities of Israeli eighth graders. Between 2019 and 2023, average scores fell by 32 points in both mathematics and science, one of the steepest declines among OECD countries. Scores in mathematics dropped from 519 to 487, and science scores dropped from 513 to 481, placing Israel 23rd and 25th respectively.

The Trump Foundation, Israel’s leading philanthropic organization in scientific education, found that only nine percent of middle school graduates meet internationally accepted excellence standards on PISA assessments. In other words, nine out of 10 Israeli children are not reaching the level demanded by the global technological environment.

PISA 2022 reinforces this picture. At age 15, Israeli students scored below the OECD average in mathematics and science, while reading performance hovered around the average. Only eight percent reached the top performance tiers in mathematics, below the OECD mean even in excellence.

The deeper concern lies in internal inequality. Socioeconomic background explains 20% of the variance in Israeli math achievement, compared with 15% across the OECD. The gap between the top and bottom deciles stands at 280 PISA points, among the largest in the developed world.

For a small country without demographic depth, every unrealized talent is a national security loss.

In practical terms, fewer than one-in-six students exits the education system with the foundational skills required for AI, semiconductors, cyber, and robotics. This constitutes a structural glass ceiling for Israel’s technological economy.

Initiatives, such as Five Times Two, led by the Education Ministry together with the Trump Foundation and industry partners, succeeded in doubling enrollment in five-unit mathematics over the past decade, from fewer than 9,000 students in 2012 to over 18,000 today.

Yet quantitative expansion has not translated into qualitative improvement. Average scores continue to fall, and the proportion of top performers is shrinking. The model works, but it must be deepened and expanded across additional technological disciplines.

The war that erupted on October 7, 2023, demonstrated the direct link between technological excellence and operational effectiveness.

Israeli AI systems such as Lavender and Where’s Daddy? played a central role in target identification, real-time intelligence analysis, and operational planning. These were not auxiliary tools. They were mission-critical systems that shaped outcomes and saved lives.

The next generation of such systems, incorporating advanced deep learning, natural language processing, and near-human computer vision, will demand an entirely different caliber of engineers and researchers. Those future developers are in today’s eighth-grade classrooms, and current data shows they are slipping away.

Israel today hosts roughly 1,500 deep-tech companies, which raised $ 28.6 billion dollars 2019 and 2025. And around 6,000 students completed advanced degrees in deep-tech fields in 2024, a number that has grown steadily for over a decade.

Yet while academia and industry expand, the feeder pipeline from middle and high schools is deteriorating. Fewer top students, declining scores and a hard ceiling of 11.3% hi-tech matriculation graduates create a structural threat to Israel’s future technological and security capacity.

The challenge is neither technical nor incremental. It cannot be solved by updating syllabi, adding classroom hours, or raising teacher salaries alone.

What is required is a deep structural and conceptual shift that treats scientific and technological education as national security infrastructure, on par with intelligence, defense industries and force readiness.

It is the educators, principals and professional teams on the ground. The centralized bureaucratic model, in which content, pace, and method are dictated from above, has reached its limits.

It must give way to a decentralized model in which local educational teams receive clear goals, measurable outcomes and professional direction, while retaining real autonomy in how they get there. Accountability for results moves to the field, supported by regional mentorship, resources and dedicated excellence centers.

This requires the accelerated establishment and strengthening of a nationwide network of scientific and technological excellence centers, with particular emphasis on geographic and social peripheries.

Operating both physically and digitally, these centers would provide pedagogical depth, high-quality instruction and advanced infrastructure where qualified teachers, laboratories and exposure are lacking. They are essential for narrowing gaps and expanding Israel’s national talent base.

STEM education must also be anchored as a core component of compulsory education, beginning in middle school. Programming, algorithmic thinking, and basic AI concepts cannot remain extracurricular or elitist tracks. They must become a shared language, comparable to mathematics or English, integrated through hands-on projects that connect physics, math, and computer science.

At the high school level, Israel must dramatically expand integrated “hi-tech matriculation” tracks combining advanced mathematics, physics, or computer science with professional English and applied technological projects in partnership with industry and academia.

The target should be explicit and ambitious: Within a decade, 20-25% of each cohort should graduate with a technological matriculation that prepares them for AI, cyber, semiconductors, and robotics. Socioeconomic gaps must be reframed. When hundreds of PISA points separate strong and weak students, the issue is not inequality alone but systematic loss of critical human capital.

In a small country, every talented child who fails to reach potential represents a strategic failure.

Focused investment in peripheral, Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities is not social charity. It is a matter of national survival.

Teachers are the system’s linchpin. They must be empowered as future architects, not treated as program executors. Dual-career models allowing engineers and scientists to combine industry work with substantial teaching roles should become standard, alongside mandatory advanced training for math, physics, and computer science teachers in AI, data, and semiconductors.

In excellence tracks, class sizes must be reduced to enable genuine depth and quality.

Finally, a coordinated national education continuum aligned with the IDF is required. This does not imply militarizing education, but rather defining shared objectives to cultivating a future technological and leadership reserve. Direct connections between high schools and elite military units through internships, hackathons, and research projects would enable early identification, development and guidance of talent across both technological and command pathways.

All of this must rest on a unified national core curriculum in science and technology, shared by every student in Israel, while preserving cultural and identity autonomy across educational streams: Uniform capability, diverse identities. That is the foundation of a system that is simultaneously national, pluralistic and fit for 21st-century challenges.

Wars last months. The battle for human capital lasts decades. While the IDF can mobilize in 48 hours, the education system operates on a 12-year cycle. Every year of delay in educational transformation translates into strategic stagnation in 2035-2045.

The data is unambiguous: A 32-point collapse in TIMSS scores. Three years of stagnation in hi-tech employment. A 6.5% decline in research and development (R&D) roles just as the global race accelerates. Only nine percent of eighth graders at international excellence levels. Only 11.3% graduated with a technological matriculation. A 280-point PISA gap between strong and weak students.

This is a national emergency that remains largely unrecognized as such.

The decisive question of the coming decade is not how many tanks or aircraft Israel possesses, but how many eighth graders can solve complex equations, write code and think systemically. They will be the developers of Israel’s AI, cyber, semiconductor, and defense systems in 2040 and beyond. If we do not invest in them today, there will simply be no one to build them tomorrow.

The educational-technology race is an existential security race. China, the United States and South Korea have already understood this and are investing billions. Israel, more dependent on technological superiority than any other nation, cannot afford to fall behind.

This is the true test of Israel’s future as a technological and security power. The decision is not whether to act, but whether we act in time.