Tech's Promised Land

PUBLICATION

Car Magazine

photography

Alex Tapley

The next big leaps in tech - and in mobility tech particularly - might not come from Silicon Valley but from Israel. This story for CAR magazine tried to get under the skin of this unpretentious and under-reported tech scene.

The search for the future of motoring takes you to some unexpected places. I am on a quiet road on the outskirts of Ramla, a mainly Arab town near Tel Aviv, just off the main highway to Jerusalem. A Palestinian family farms a scrubby piece of land on one side. Peacocks sometimes strut out into the street and kids ride horses bareback along it. On the other side is an ageing, yellowing concrete industrial unit with roller shutter doors.

A dusty Suzuki Swift and an old Isuzu Trooper are parked outside. This is not how you'd expect the headquarters of a tech start-up to look, or where you'd expect to find it. But inside you'll find Moshe Shlisel, a former Israeli special forces commander, and the two guys he founded Guardknox with. Between them they created Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system and the cybersecurity for its F35 fighter jets, among other projects, and now they'd like to stop hackers taking control of your car, your data and the other networks your car connects to. If they can keep Iran out of a warplane they can probably keep a Russian teenager out of your Volkswagen.

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