Michael Eisenberg on Israeli civic society, the India-Middle East Corridor replacing BRICS, and why he's bearish on Europe

Summary

Michael Eisenberg, general partner at Aleph in Tel Aviv and formerly of Benchmark, argues that the geopolitical and technological intersection is the defining investment theme of the moment — even though his own fund invests exclusively in Israel.

Israeli civic society as a model

Eisenberg's most pointed argument isn't about government modernization. It's that Israel's civic society has outpaced its government so thoroughly that civilians have effectively taken over emergency functions. On October 7th, he says, government was largely absent while civilians arrived with their own weapons and cars to evacuate people. Today, wildfires set by terrorists are burning across 20 locations in Israel, and the volunteer organization he chairs — the New Guardians — is deploying thousands of civilians to fight them. His thesis is that technology-enabled civic society, not government, is the scalable model for the 21st century, with defense and policing as the only functions that must remain state-controlled.

The underlying argument ties directly to AI: civic society already runs on modern tools while government runs on fax machines, and that gap creates institutional friction that erodes public trust. Countries that fail to accelerate government adoption risk a collapse of social cohesion, not just competitive disadvantage.

The AI race framing

Eisenberg agrees with his former Benchmark partner Bill Gurley that the AI race is an infinite game, but pushes back on the framing. The real risk isn't losing a finite contest — it's that AI accelerates every iterative cycle so fast that falling behind compounds rapidly. He presented data in Abu Dhabi roughly 14 months ago showing correlation between rising compute power and increases in cyber attacks and interest in bioweapons online, which he reads as causal. Agents of chaos now have access to tools that were previously out of reach, and staying ahead is what keeps them contained.

BRICS is dead; the India-Middle East Corridor is the replacement

Eisenberg is direct that BRICS has effectively collapsed as a coherent investment thesis. His reasoning is structural: China, Russia, and arguably Brazil are not real democracies, and in non-democracies investors don't actually own what they think they own. Free markets require free societies — the inverse of Milton Friedman's formulation, but Eisenberg argues it holds.

India, he says, was always misplaced in that grouping. The emerging alternative is the India-Middle East Corridor (IMC) — a trade and infrastructure route running from India by sea to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, across Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, and out to the Mediterranean. It is a direct counter to China's Belt and Road Initiative, which runs through Turkey and Pakistan. Eisenberg sees a major opportunity for the US to anchor India as a core node in a Western-aligned supply chain, though he's clear-eyed that replicating what Shenzhen, China, and Taiwan built over 30 years won't happen quickly.

Geography of opportunity

Eisenberg is bearish on Europe broadly — a position he has stated publicly before, including on Harry Stebbings' podcast, where it landed him on what he calls the 'king of Europe's s**t list.' He is bullish on the US, Israel, and increasingly Abu Dhabi and Dubai, which he describes as a magnet for talent fleeing Russia and Ukraine. Microsoft's partnership with MGX, Mubadala, and G42 in the Emirates is the kind of infrastructure play he sees as significant. The corridor of cities he considers meaningful for technology: Silicon Valley, New York, Austin, Miami, Tel Aviv, and now the Gulf.

Portfolio specifics

Aleph has backed several companies relevant to the defense and deep-tech thesis. OneStep, founded by three Talpiot alumni, turns a smartphone into what Eisenberg calls a 'gait lab' — using movement patterns to predict health outcomes including dementia risk and hip and knee replacement efficacy. It sells to rehab facilities and medical device companies including Zimmer, and Eisenberg describes it as growing extremely fast. Ore makes rocket fuel and explosives using biological and natural processes. A specialty chemicals company with Standard Industries and WR Grace as co-investors uses similar biological methods. Dream, co-founded by former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, does national-level AI protection and is, in Eisenberg's telling, one of the fastest-growing companies in the world right now.

The common thread in the portfolio is Talpiot — an Israeli military program that takes roughly 30 people a year, puts them through a decade-long track combining multiple degrees with direct responsibility for major weapons programs, and produces founders who, in Eisenberg's view, already know how to build companies before they leave.