[rfairfax]

Israel's rise as a tech hub has quite a few similarities to Silicon Valley's early history. Having good schools and a frontier spirit seem like key ingredients. Perhaps most important is the involvement of military spending in seeding research which leads to new technologies, which in turn spin off from their government-funded roots and form new private companies, which then seed other new companies, venture capitalists move in, more companies are seeded, the cycle continues. Another 50 years and continued military support from the US, and Israel will surely be an excellent complement to the valley.

[nobody314159265]

Ditto for South Africa. There is (or was) an awful lot of home grown military and mining technology from the days of apartheid and sanctions when everything had to be invented locally.

Ironically a lot of the Isreali inventiveness was from the days when they didn't get automatic US military support. If you want to crush a country's R&D drive, simply give them shiny military toys for free.