Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. It is February twenty-sixth, two thousand twenty-six, and I am Corn, sitting here in the studio with my brother, as always.
Herman Poppleberry here. It is good to be back, Corn. I have been looking forward to this one all morning. We are diving into some heavy-duty geopolitical modeling today.
It is a heavy one. Today's prompt comes from Daniel, who is actually listening in from Jerusalem. He is asking about the concept of diversification in foreign relations, specifically for Israel. He is posing a pretty provocative "what if" question: What would happen if Israel lost the support of both the United States and the European Union simultaneously? He wants us to look at the trade balance, historical precedents for these kinds of massive diplomatic pivots, and how artificial intelligence might help a country navigate that kind of existential strategic shift.
It is a fascinating prompt because it touches on the absolute bedrock of Israeli security and economic policy. For decades, the assumption has been that the West is the indispensable partner. Daniel’s question forces us to look at the cold, hard numbers and the technical infrastructure required to actually move a nation’s entire orbit from West to East. We are talking about a total re-wiring of a country's DNA.
And Daniel is seeing the local discourse on this every day. It is one thing to talk about strategic ambiguity or non-dependency in the abstract, but when you look at the actual cargo ships, the fiber optic cables, and the venture capital flows, it becomes a much more complex engineering and data problem.
Right. And to set the stage, we should probably start with where things stand right now, as of early two thousand twenty-six. If we are talking about a scenario where the United States and the European Union both pull their support, we are talking about a total upheaval. The European Union is currently Israel's largest trade partner as a bloc. We are talking about over thirty percent of Israel's total trade in goods. Then you have the United States, which is the largest single-country partner, especially when you factor in services and high-tech.
So if you lose both, you are essentially looking at a hole in the economy that covers more than sixty or seventy percent of your external interactions. That is not just a recession, Herman. That is a systemic shock. Let’s dig into the trade balance first. What does the current breakdown look like, and where is the vulnerability?
Well, the numbers from the two thousand twenty-five fiscal year are quite telling. We saw Israel’s exports of services continue to climb, often surpassing the export of physical goods. High-tech services—everything from cyber security to software as a service—account for more than fifty percent of total exports. The vast majority of those services are consumed by American and European companies. If those markets close, you cannot just ship that code to a different port. You need a whole new ecosystem of buyers who use the same standards, have the same security requirements, and, frankly, the same legal frameworks for intellectual property.
And on the import side? I imagine that is where the immediate "lights out" risk lives.
That is where it gets even more granular and dangerous. Israel imports a huge amount of machinery, electrical equipment, and raw materials from Europe. Think about the manufacturing sector in places like the Galilee or the Negev. If you are a factory in Haifa and your specialized precision parts come from Germany or Italy, and suddenly that trade agreement is gone or an embargo is in place, your production line stops. You can’t just swap a German-made precision tool for a different one from, say, Vietnam, without significant re-tooling and potentially millions in capital expenditure. It is a "lock-in" effect that is physical, not just economic.
So the immediate impact is a massive supply chain fracture. But Daniel is asking about the pivot. If the West is gone, is there a realistic alternative in Asia or the Global South? Can the "Look East" policy actually fill a hole that big?
This is where the strategic thinking gets really interesting. We have seen a steady increase in trade with Asia over the last decade. China and India are already massive partners. China is a major source of infrastructure investment—they literally built the new Bay Terminal in Haifa. India is a huge market for defense and agricultural technology. But there is a massive difference between having them as trade partners and having them as strategic pillars that replace the West.
Right, because the United States provides more than just trade. They provide the diplomatic umbrella at the United Nations and the security guarantees. If Israel pivots toward Asia, it’s not just about selling more oranges or cyber-defense software to Beijing or New Delhi. It is about whether those countries are willing or able to provide the same kind of international cover.
And that is a huge gamble. China’s foreign policy is generally transactional and focused on non-interference. They want stability for their Belt and Road Initiative, but they aren't necessarily looking to replace the United States as a security guarantor in the Levant. India is more aligned in terms of shared security concerns regarding extremism, but they also have to balance their own relations with the rest of the Middle East and their energy needs from the Gulf. It is a much more fragmented landscape than the relatively cohesive Western bloc we have seen since the nineteen fifties.
I want to look at the historical precedents Daniel mentioned. Has any country actually pulled off a shift this massive? Moving from one global bloc to another while under pressure?
There are a few interesting examples, though none are a perfect one-to-one match. You could look at the United Kingdom after Brexit as a recent, albeit ongoing, attempt to pivot away from a massive trade bloc toward a "Global Britain" model. That has been incredibly difficult and has shown just how much friction is created when you leave a harmonized regulatory environment. Even with a shared language and history with the United States, the United Kingdom has struggled to replace the seamless trade they had with the European Union.
Another one that comes to mind is South Korea in the late twentieth century. They moved from being almost entirely dependent on the United States for their economic and security survival to becoming a global powerhouse that balances relations with the United States, China, and Japan. But as you often point out, Herman, they did that by expanding their footprint, not by losing their primary partner. They added the East to the West; they didn't swap one for the other.
Losing the partner is the scary part of Daniel's prompt. A better, albeit darker, example might be the Soviet Union’s former satellites after the collapse in nineteen ninety-one. Countries like Poland or the Baltic states had to pivot their entire economies from the East to the West in a matter of years. Their entire infrastructure was built for the Soviet system. The rail gauges were different—literally, the tracks were a different width—the power grids were integrated with Russia, and their trade was all internal to the Eastern bloc.
That is a great point. The "rail gauge" problem is such a perfect literal example of the technical friction. If your country is built to plug into one system, you can’t just flip a switch and plug into another. You have to rebuild the sockets.
Precisely. And in Israel’s case, those "sockets" are things like the European Union’s Horizon Europe research program. Israel is a part of that, and it provides billions in funding and, more importantly, a framework for collaboration between universities and tech companies. If you lose that, you have to build a brand-new framework with, say, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or individual countries like Japan or South Korea. That takes years of diplomatic legwork and legal harmonization. You are talking about thousands of pages of new treaties that have to be negotiated from a position of weakness if you've already lost your Western backing.
Let’s talk about that diplomatic legwork. Daniel asked how this kind of strategic thinking actually occurs. Who is in the room when a country decides to move its entire focus from Europe to Asia? Is it just politicians making speeches?
In Israel, it is a mix of the National Security Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Economy. But more and more, it is also about the private sector. The government can sign all the treaties they want, but if the tech companies in Tel Aviv don’t see a path to profit in the East, or if they can't get their engineers visas to work in Tokyo, the pivot fails. It's a bottom-up process as much as a top-down one.
This seems like a perfect place to bring in the AI angle. Daniel is an AI enthusiast, and he wants to know to what extent AI can assist in this process. How do you model a whole-nation pivot? Can an LLM tell you how to save an economy?
This is actually where the cutting edge of geopolitical analysis is moving. We talked about this a bit in episode six hundred sixty-two when we discussed the geopolitical graph. Imagine a digital twin of a country’s entire trade and diplomatic network. You can use large language models and graph neural networks to simulate shocks. You feed the AI every bill of lading, every customs declaration, every flight path, and every fiber optic connection.
So you could literally run a simulation that says, "Okay, the European Union just imposed a total trade embargo on agricultural tech. What happens to our supply of medical isotopes in forty-eight hours?"
And the AI can find the non-obvious alternatives. It might identify that while you can't get a specific part from Germany, there is a factory in South Korea that produces a ninety-eight percent compatible version, but they currently only ship to Brazil. The AI can then suggest the diplomatic and logistical path to redirect that supply chain. It can process millions of these variables in seconds, whereas a human committee might take months to even identify the problem, let alone the solution.
It is about mapping the hidden dependencies. Most of the time, we only see the first-order connections. I buy a car from Japan. But the AI sees that the car from Japan uses a chip from Taiwan that was designed using software from California. If you lose the California software because of a Western pull-back, the Japanese car doesn't get built, and your pivot to Asia hits a wall you didn't even know existed.
That is the "cascading implications" problem. And it is why a pivot is so dangerous. The global economy is so intertwined that you can't really "go it alone" or even "go with a different group" without touching the group you left. AI helps you map those second and third-order effects so you aren't blindsided by your own dependencies.
It makes me think about the work Daniel does in automation and tech communications. He is always looking at how to streamline these complex systems. If you were the Israeli government, you would want an AI-driven dashboard that shows you your "autonomy score" in real-time. How much of our food, energy, and defense is dependent on people who might not like us tomorrow?
And that brings us back to David Ben-Gurion, whom Daniel mentioned in his audio prompt. Ben-Gurion was obsessed with "mamlachtiyut," or statism, and the idea that Israel must be able to stand on its own. He would have loved the idea of a digital twin for national security. He understood that independence isn't just a feeling; it's a set of logistics. In nineteen forty-eight, that meant securing water and ammunition. In two thousand twenty-six, it means securing data centers and semiconductor supply lines.
But back then, independence meant growing your own wheat and building your own rifles. Today, independence means having your own semiconductor fab or your own sovereign cloud. It is a much higher bar for a small country.
It is almost an impossible bar. Even the United States and China struggle with true non-dependency. For a country of ten million people, true non-dependency is a myth. The goal isn't to be independent; it's to be "too important to fail" for as many different people as possible. Diversification isn't about leaving the West; it's about making sure the East is just as invested in your survival. You want the "sockets" to be universal.
That is a subtle but crucial distinction. It is not a pivot away; it is an expansion outward. But Daniel's scenario is the "nightmare" version where the choice is taken away. If the West leaves you, the expansion becomes a desperate scramble for survival.
And in that scramble, the terms of the deal get much worse. If China knows you have nowhere else to go, they aren't going to give you a "friendship" price. They are going to extract every ounce of strategic value they can. We have seen this with other countries that have become overly dependent on a single non-Western power. You end up trading one set of dependencies for another, often with fewer human rights protections or democratic alignment. You might trade a partner that criticizes your policy for a partner that wants to own your ports and your data.
Let’s take a quick break here. I think we need to process the weight of that. When we come back, I want to talk more about the specific industries that would be the hardest to pivot—like defense—and what the "Look East" strategy actually looks like in practice.
Sounds good. I have some thoughts on the defense sector specifically that I want to dive into. It's the most "locked-in" part of the whole equation.
Dorothy: Herman? Herman, bubbeleh, are you there?
Mum? Mum, I am on the show right now. We are recording.
Dorothy: I know, I know, but I was just at the market and I saw those nice peppers you like. Do you want me to bring some over? And also, did you call the dentist? You know your father said you shouldn't wait on that tooth.
Dorothy, I am literally in the middle of a discussion about international trade relations. I will call you back in twenty minutes, I promise.
Dorothy: Okay, sweetheart, don't be grumpy. I'll leave the peppers by the door. And don't forget we have Shabbat dinner at six on Friday! Love you!
Hi Dorothy!
Sorry about that. She... she has a knack for timing. Every time we talk about the end of the world, she calls about peppers.
Honestly, it’s a good reminder. Behind all these high-level geopolitical discussions, there are people just trying to make sure their kids go to the dentist and have enough peppers for dinner. That is what a trade war actually impacts—the price of peppers and the availability of dental supplies. If the trade routes from Europe are cut, Dorothy’s peppers might cost five times as much, or they might not be there at all.
It’s the domestic reality that usually breaks a government’s resolve in these scenarios. But let’s get back to the technical side. We were talking about the difficulty of pivoting specific industries.
Right. You mentioned defense. That seems like the big one. Israel’s defense industry is deeply integrated with the United States. Not just in terms of the three point eight billion dollars in annual military aid, but in terms of research and development.
It is the "interoperability" trap. If your fighter jets are American F-thirty-fives, your radar systems are designed to talk to American satellites, and your missiles use American-made sensors, you can’t just buy a Chinese jet and expect it to work with the rest of your fleet. You would have to replace the entire ecosystem—the maintenance crews, the software, the training manuals, the spare parts. That is a thirty-year project, not a three-year one. Without the U.S. supply chain, the Israeli Air Force would be grounded within months due to a lack of specialized components.
And what about the tech sector? If the European Union and the United States pull back, what happens to the venture capital? Most of the money flowing into Israeli startups comes from Silicon Valley or European investment funds.
That is perhaps the most immediate "kill switch." If the financial pipes are cut, the "Startup Nation" runs out of fuel in six months. Now, Daniel asked about the pivot to Asia. There is a lot of capital in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. But those investors have a very different risk profile. They are also very sensitive to secondary sanctions. If the United States isn't just "pulling support" but actively imposing sanctions, those Asian investors will vanish instantly. They aren't going to risk their access to the New York Stock Exchange for a piece of a Tel Aviv cyber security firm.
So the "simultaneous loss" of the United States and the European Union is basically a total economic blockade in all but name. Even if they don't call it a blockade, the chilling effect on capital and logistics would act like one.
Precisely. So, to answer Daniel’s question about how strategic thinking occurs in this scenario: the first step is actually "preventative diversification." You don't wait for the crisis to happen. You start building the bridges now so that you are never in a position where any one bloc has total leverage over you. You make yourself a "multi-homed" nation.
Which is exactly what we have seen with the "Look East" policy over the last few years. Israel has been very aggressive about building ties with India, specifically. The relationship with Prime Minister Modi has been a cornerstone of this. It is a strategic partnership that covers agriculture, water tech, and defense.
And India is a great partner for this because they also value their own strategic autonomy. They don't want to be told who they can and cannot trade with. By building that bridge, Israel creates a "relief valve." If things get tight with Europe, they can lean harder into the Indian market. We saw this with the I-two-U-two group—India, Israel, the UAE, and the United States. It was an attempt to create a new "west-to-east" corridor.
But again, it’s about scale. The Indian economy is massive and growing, but it doesn't yet replace the sheer purchasing power and high-end technological synergy of the Western bloc. If you lose the U.S. and E.U., India can't just absorb all of Israel's high-tech exports overnight.
Not yet. But this is where the AI comes back in. If you are a strategic planner in the Prime Minister's Office, you are looking at the growth curves. You are using predictive modeling to ask, "In two thousand forty, where will the center of gravity be?" If the AI tells you that the Indo-Pacific will represent fifty percent of global gross domestic product by then, then the pivot isn't a "scramble"—it is just smart long-term planning. You are moving toward the future rather than clinging to the past.
It’s like what we talked about in episode four hundred seventy-four regarding the price of autonomy. There is a cost to not being dependent. You might have to accept slower growth or higher costs in the short term to build that redundant infrastructure. It’s like paying for an insurance policy you hope you never have to use. You buy the more expensive Indian-made component now so that you aren't stuck if the European one disappears later.
And that is a hard sell for a politician who has an election in two years. "I want to make your life ten percent more expensive today so that we are safer in twenty years" is not a winning slogan. This is where the tension between technical strategic thinking and political reality becomes a real problem. Most voters care about the price of peppers today, not the trade balance in two thousand forty-six.
Let’s look at another country that has done this well. Singapore is often cited as the gold standard for this kind of "multi-aligned" diplomacy. They are a tiny island with no natural resources, yet they are essential to both the West and the East.
Singapore is the master of being the "useful middleman." They host American naval vessels while being one of China's largest investors. They have free trade agreements with everyone. Their "strategic thinking" is based on the idea of being a "global city-state" rather than a regional player. They make themselves indispensable to everyone's supply chain. If Singapore disappears, everyone's economy takes a hit.
Could Israel adopt that model? Being the "Singapore of the Middle East"?
That was the dream in the nineteen nineties during the Oslo years. The idea was that Israel would be the high-tech hub for the entire region. The Abraham Accords were a massive step back toward that vision. By normalizing relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, Israel opened up a whole new corridor of trade and cooperation that doesn't rely on the European Union. You can now fly from Tel Aviv to Dubai and then on to Mumbai or Singapore without ever touching Western airspace.
Those "Startup Embassies" we talked about in episode four hundred fifty-two. That was such a fascinating look at how diplomacy is changing. It’s not just about ambassadors in fancy suits; it’s about tech liaisons helping a startup in Dubai use Israeli irrigation tech. It's "functional diplomacy."
That is "boutique diplomacy." It is granular, it is functional, and it builds deep roots that are harder to pull up than a single political treaty. If the Emirati government is using Israeli tech for their food security, they are going to be much more hesitant to join a boycott. You create a web of mutual dependence.
So, the answer to Daniel’s question about the "massive refocusing of diplomatic efforts" is that it is already happening, but it’s happening at the edges. The core is still very much Western-facing. To truly pivot would require a level of national mobilization that we haven't seen since the founding of the state. It would be a "Ben-Gurion moment."
It would mean changing the education system to prioritize Asian languages like Mandarin or Hindi. It would mean changing the legal system to be more compatible with Eastern trade law. It would mean a total re-orientation of the national psyche. Right now, most Israelis look at themselves as part of the Western world. To change that is a generational task. You are asking people to change who they think they are.
It’s also a data task. Imagine the sheer amount of information you would need to re-map your entire trade network. Every single tariff, every single shipping route, every single regulatory standard for every single product. This is where AI isn't just "helpful"—it is mandatory. A human being cannot hold the entire global trade graph in their head. You need a "Geopolitical Operating System."
And you have to account for the "adversarial" AI on the other side. If you are trying to pivot, your rivals will be using their own AI to identify your new vulnerabilities and move to block them. If you try to open a new trade route through the Red Sea, they might use predictive models to see where they can most effectively disrupt your logistics. It becomes a high-stakes game of algorithmic chess.
"Algorithmic chess" with the survival of a nation on the line. That is a terrifying thought. But it also shows why Daniel’s work in tech and AI is so relevant to the big-picture survival of the country. These aren't just "cool tools" for making apps; they are the infrastructure of modern sovereignty. If you don't have the best AI, you can't defend your trade routes.
And I think the big lesson from other countries is that you can never truly "finish" a pivot. You have to be in a state of constant, dynamic re-balancing. The moment you think you are "safe" with a new partner, the world changes again. Look at how quickly the relationship between Russia and the West changed in twenty twenty-two. Or how the U.S.-China relationship shifted in the late twenty-teens.
It’s the "Walking Between Raindrops" metaphor from episode five hundred fifty-five. You are always moving, always adjusting, trying to stay dry in a storm that keeps shifting direction. You can't stop moving, or you'll get soaked.
And if the storm gets too big—if both the United States and the European Union turn their backs—you are going to get wet. There is no way around it. The goal of the pivot is just to make sure you have a change of clothes and a dry place to go when the rain stops. You need a backup plan for your backup plan.
That is a sobering way to look at it. But I think it’s the most realistic one. Daniel’s prompt forces us to confront the fact that the "special relationship" with the West is a choice made by both sides every day. It is not a law of nature. It's a political and economic agreement that requires constant maintenance.
And being prepared for that choice to change is the mark of a mature state. It’s not about being "anti-Western"; it’s about being "pro-survival." It's about recognizing that the world of two thousand twenty-six is much more multipolar than the world of nineteen ninety-six.
So, what are the practical takeaways here? If you are a listener who isn't a government minister, why does this matter to you?
First, it matters because it impacts your wallet. If you are a business owner or an investor, you need to be looking at your own "dependency graph." Are you too reliant on a single market? Could your business survive a major geopolitical shift? Diversification isn't just for countries; it's for companies and individuals too.
Second, it shows the value of "technical literacy" in diplomacy. We need leaders who understand what a supply chain actually looks like and how AI can be used to protect it. It’s not enough to have good speeches; you need good systems. We need people who understand the "rail gauge" of the digital age.
And third, it’s a reminder that "independence" in the twenty-first century is about the quality of your networks, not the height of your walls. The more people you are connected to in meaningful, functional ways—whether it's through the Abraham Accords or tech partnerships in India—the safer you are. Isolation is the real enemy.
I think that is a perfect place to start wrapping up. We’ve covered a lot of ground today—from the hard numbers of Israel’s trade balance to the historical precedents of the Soviet collapse and the future potential of AI-driven strategic modeling.
It’s a lot to chew on. And Daniel, thank you for sending this in from Jerusalem. It’s a prompt that really gets to the heart of what this show is about—taking a "weird" or uncomfortable idea and digging into the technical and strategic reality beneath it. It's about looking at the world as it is, not just as we want it to be.
And hey, to all of our listeners out there, if you are enjoying these deep dives, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It genuinely helps the show reach more people who are interested in these kinds of topics. We are trying to build our own network here!
It really does. We love seeing the community grow and hearing your feedback.
You can find all of our past episodes, including the ones we mentioned today like episode six hundred sixty-two on the geopolitical graph or episode five hundred one on the United States footprint in Jerusalem, at myweirdprompts.com. We have a full archive there, and you can also find our RSS feed if you want to subscribe.
And if you have a prompt of your own—maybe something about the future of AI in your own industry or a "what if" scenario you’ve been mulling over—send it to us at
show@myweirdprompts.com. We would love to hear from you. We might even give you a shout-out on the show.
Also, a quick shout-out to Suno for our show music. It’s always amazing to see what that AI can pull together. It really captures that "tech-meets-geopolitics" vibe we are going for.
It sets the mood perfectly. Alright, I think that is it for today. I need to go call my mother back before she sends a search party with those peppers. I don't want to deal with a domestic supply chain crisis of my own.
Good luck with that, Herman. Tell Dorothy we say hi. Thanks for listening, everyone. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Until next time, stay curious and keep prompting. Goodbye!
Bye everyone!
