The following interview is an episode of PTO Extra.

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where you can put your points to recent guests, then please consider becoming a supporter of the show at patreon.com forward slash poll theory other. A startup. A startup country, the world's first AI superpower, an innovation nation.

Those are some of the breathless descriptions used by Israeli politicians, security officials,

journalists and business leaders to hail Israel's high-tech industry and its

synergy with the Israeli military, which had been instrumental in creating what appeared to be the

impregnable architecture of security around the occupied Gaza Strip.

But on October 7th, Israel's obsession with what my guest today, Sophia Goodfriend, describes

as techno-solutionism, came

back to haunt the country, as Hamas succeeded in breaching the Gaza barrier at 80 different

points and disabling many of Israel's automated weapons and surveillance systems.

In today's episode of PTO Extra, I spoke with Sophia about her recent articles in the Baffler and foreign

policy regarding Israel's high-tech methods of waging war and how it conducts its illegal

and brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

In your recent article for the Baffler, you describe how in late September

Israeli military representatives took Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO's military committee,

on a tour of Israel's security architecture around Gaza, showing him the Gaza-Israel barrier,

the IDF's automated weaponry and various surveillance

systems.

Ten days after that tour, Hamas militants launched Operation Al-AXA Flood and breached the Gaza

fence in more than 80 places and then killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Can you describe what Bauer would have seen on that tour and what Israel's security

...