We have heard from Spain. Today, we hear from Israel.

A week ago, I sent out an email to clients, friends, folks I know in: Chile, Japan, Ireland, India, England, Spain, Germany, Korea, Columbia, Dubai, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and California. I believe there are a total of sixteen. All of these persons are entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and brilliant persons.

I asked them to give me their thoughts on the following topics:

1. How are you feeling — optimistic, pessimistic — about business, the world, your country in general?

2. What is the world’s biggest challenge from here on out?

3. Anything that you think I need to know?

Our Israeli correspondent is an information technology, software, hardware consultant with an international following. He is a sophisticated traveler of the word and has a child in the Israeli military. We speak fairly often as I am a huge fan of Israel.

He is articulate and smart as a whip. He responded in a “free-form” manner, so I will summarize his thoughts.

Our Israeli observer bounces “between optimistic and pessimistic.” He believes the US is very close to a “radical progressive agenda taking hold,” but has great faith in the American people and notes the fact that we have an evenly divided Congress plus the reality we have elections every two yeas.

He is no fan of the cancel culture and believes a reasonable person should be able to raise questions as to whether an election has been free and fair without being accused of treason.

He decries cultural uniformity suggesting it may be cultural imperialism, while suggesting we may need a return to true federalism while recognizing how different Texas and California are on such issues as abortion.

He expects the US economy in 2021 to be good because of pent-up demand from 2020, but it will not be nearly as good as it might have been because of fears of a Biden admin and additional regulation and the specter of higher taxes.

He thinks the US is way too easy on China and that the Hunter Biden story vis a vis China is a “major issue.”

His insights on the Abraham Accords are very keen. He thinks the Middle East Biden inherits is vastly different from the Obama/Biden Middle East and that the Abraham Accords are here to stay. He thinks the Accords are a big deal.

Our Israeli correspondent thinks that the Biden rapproachment with Iran will drive the Israel-UAE-Bahrain, et al, relationship, including Saudi Arabia, even closer. Very keen insight.

He believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu standing up to Obama was a “major driver” in the Arabs viewing Israel as a worthy partner. Remember everyone in that region is wary of the hegemony and the terror exportation of Iran. Iran is their common enemy. Think about this. This is the kind of keen insight only a native in the region could provide.

He views Biden as a much weaker character than Obama both “personally and politically.”

On COVID, Biden brings nothing different Trump other than spending even more money. He says America can easily inoculate 100MM with the vaccine, but not the government. He sees it correctly as an issue for the individual states.

He thinks the major tech players have crushed the “free and open Internet” under their combined economic weight: Apple/Google app distribution, Amazon/Google/Azure cloud services.

He sees a future with three possible outcomes:

 1. Dark Ages — looks good, but is rife with censorship, not by government, but by the Tech Illuminati. Worst outcome. May lead to civil war.

 2. Competition — old fashioned competition makes “censorship impossible.” Do we want to or should we be shutting down Communist Insurrectionists and child pornographers?

 3. Regulated outcome — this takes some form of “common carrier” regulation and notes that Zuckerberg at Facebook has been asking for Congress to regulate them for years.

So, dear reader, there you have it, the Voice of Israel.

Who’s next, Big Red Car?

Next up, we have Chile.

Be well, amigo. This is how the world sees us. Drink it in.