Shyam Sankar and Joab Rosenberg
Israel’s defense and intelligence services are renowned for nurturing young technical talent. But their real advantage in the Gaza war is built on senior technical expertise found in the reserve units that have been called up for duty. The mix of young, raw talent combined with the wisdom and experience of an older reserve generation is an innovative model the United States can and should embrace.
Among the 360,000 reservists called up since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 are some of Israel’s most seasoned software engineers, data scientists and data analysts. After decades of delivering hyper-scaled software solutions in the commercial sector — and learning from their failures — these senior reservists are spearheading explosive change in the Israeli military’s technical and analytical capabilities. Furthermore, they provide unique peer-to-peer collaboration with senior military leaders as well as mentoring for early-career technologists.
Though the United States’ reserve structure is very different from Israel’s, the Defense Department has much to learn from that model. To rapidly mature its technological capabilities, as well as expand its access to world-class technical talent, the department must create pathways for experienced commercial innovators to put on the uniform. In short, the United States should establish a new form of elite technical reserve duty.
The landscape of warfare has changed, and today’s commanders are as likely to work from a faraway desk as from a fortified battlefield post. Their most lethal weapon system is software. Providing explicit reserve opportunities for commercial technologists would boost the U.S. capability in at least three ways. First, it would infuse top engineering capability into the ranks, from the Pentagon to the front lines. Second, it would allow senior military leaders to work directly with some of the country’s sharpest technological minds, not as outside advisers but as true mission partners. Third, it would support a two-way knowledge transfer in which military technologists learn the private sector’s best practices, while industry leaders gain a sharper understanding of what U.S. warfighters need.
The impact of experience extends beyond software engineering. One of us has witnessed several examples in Israel since Oct. 7: When Hamas’s financial transactions had to be analyzed, a volunteer who works in the financial industry quickly connected the necessary dots. In another case, a senior data scientist — whose day job is in advertising — was able to immediately handle complex data sets from media and tech sources. And skilled academics used cutting-edge AI algorithms to sift through the enormous amount of GoPro, phone and multimedia content posted by the terrorists, enabling Israel to track them and their hostages.
Unlike Israel, the United States should not — and, in fact, cannot — wait for a war of necessity to realize these benefits. Israel’s smooth integration of senior technical talent should serve as inspiration to act now. The newly established technical reserve units would set aside maximum age limits and seek individuals with a certain number of years of experience in fields such as software engineering, data science, AI and machine learning modeling, and technical project management. Their work would pay off not only during times of activation after a crisis but also during every single day they perform their reserve duty.
The United States’ reserve force is more complicated than Israel’s, but the necessary authorities for such an initiative already exist within each military service. One is at the Marine Innovation Unit, launched in 2022, in which reservists with industry-trained skills in technology and management help bring commercially proven capabilities to the force. But we need more than an experimental unit here and there — the rapid proliferation of this type of reserve initiative is in order.
In this domain, the United States lags behind China and Russia, which have already incorporated industry talent in their militaries. However, whereas China has achieved this advantage through illiberal policies such as military-civil fusion and Russia has done so through conscription and brute force, the United States can accomplish it through the laissez-faire dynamism that makes America’s innovators and warfighters second to none.
While the combination of youth and experience in the IDF is a unique byproduct of the current war, the Defense Department already has a strong potential pool of mission-driven recruits in the commercial innovation sector. In recent years, technical talent has flocked to the U.S. defense tech ecosystem, which itself has become a top recipient of private venture capital. America’s experienced technologists are ready and eager to serve.
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