Israel as a cluster of innovation
As an urban planner and economic geographer whose research focusses on the geography of innovation in Canada and other countries of the global north, my professional interests do not typically intersect with Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, nor with its murderous occupation of the West Bank.
I am aware, however, that Israel is often put forward as a hub of technological innovation, driven by high levels of military spending and by its close connections with Silicon Valley. Indeed, in 2011 Engel et al concluded that:
“Israel [is] an example of a Cluster of Innovation (COI) […] part of a global Super Cluster of Innovation (Super-COI), […] the Israel/Silicon Valley Super-COI” .
The June 2025 UN special rapporteur’s report
The UN special rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Alabanese, recently published a report detailing how major, and highly innovative, corporations such as IBM, Palantir, Elbit Systems, and Hyundai are actively contributing – by way of weapons, surveillance technology, earth moving machinery – to Israel’s genocide and to its attempt to place surviving Palestinians in concentration camps, then cleanse Gaza of its inhabitants1.
These firms not only sell weaponry and surveillance systems: they improve them – they innovate – through experimentation in the Palestinian killing fields:
“…science and technology departments serve as research and development hubs for collaborations between the Israeli military and arms contractors, including Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, IBM and Lockheed Martin, and so contribute to producing the tools for surveillance, crowd control, urban warfare, facial recognition and targeted killing, tools that are effectively tested on Palestinians”. (p 24, UN report 2005).
The Tel Aviv stockmarket has rocketed since 2023, as tech companies reap the benefits of experminentation in innovative genocidal and surveillance markets:
“This entire environment has facilitated a record 179 per cent increase in United States dollar-equivalent equity prices of the companies listed in the Tel Aviv stock exchange since the start of the assault on Gaza, translating into a $157.9 billion gain” (p23, UN report 2025).
If readers feel that the UN rapporteur is exaggerating, they should rest assured that the Financial Times concurs (14th July 2025, Ruchir Sharma):
“Since the October 7 2023 attacks on Israel, the best-performing major stock market in the world is . . . Israel. After taking an initial hit, the market recovered fully in four weeks, and since then is up around 80 per cent in dollar terms….
….Perhaps the most telling sign of its dynamism is that Israel now spends more than 6 per cent of GDP on research and development — more than any other nation and over double the global average. An unusually high share — about half — of that R&D funding comes from foreign multinationals, many involved in defence-related industries.”
What is our academic responsibility?
Most geographers and planners who study innovation implicitly accept that innovation is a “good thing”. It contributes to economic growth, to wealth creation, and – some believe – to local and regional development.
The assumption of innovation’s benignity is manifestly ill-conceived.
Of course, many of us benefit from innovations such as universal health care, bicycles, LED lighting, waste treatment, vaccinations and so on. So innovation can be beneficial.
But many people also suffer the consequences of innovative chemicals, production processes, financial wizardry, weapons and surveillance systems (which now permeate most societies, not just Palestine). So innovation can be nefarious.
Innovation should also be judged on a variety of time-scales.
For example: to what extent have fossil fuel extraction and use, foundational innovations of the indusrial revolution, been beneficial or destructive?
The jury is out: short-term gains of the last 200 years may well be wiped out by climate catastrophe and ecosystem collapse.
Academics and universities should approach innovation critically
McGill, like all universities, touts technological innovation as an objective and as a measure of success.
Yet innovation, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad: it should be evaluated, for different people, at different time-scales, and with well identified objectives. An innovation that greatly improves torture, for example, would be considered nefarious in a universe where torture was deemed unpalatable. Thus,
- it is not sufficient for engineers to justify their creations by calling them ‘innovative’;
- it is not sufficient for McGill to point to market demand (which can emanate from genocidal governments, delusional billionnaires, short-term market bubbles, or torturers) as arbiter of innovation;
- it is not sufficient for geographers (such as myself) to assume innovation is desirable.
Innovation must be problematised. Innovation is not an end, but a means to an end…
…and to what end do economists, geographers, and management scholars study ‘factors of innovation’ ?
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1 Using terms such as “genocide”, “cleansing” and “killing fields” is unfortunately appropriate: following George Orwell, I recognize that “…political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness“. I am not a politician: I will use appropriate language, adopting well-recognised definitions and meaning. As to whether facts on the ground justify these terms, CNN reports, on Tuesday 8th July 2025, that Mr.Katz, Israel’s defense Minister, is floating plans to “house some 600,000 displaced Palestinians who have been forced to evacuate to the Al-Mawasi area along the coast of southern Gaza. Eventually, the defense minister said the entire population of Gaza – more than 2 million Palestinians – will be held in the zone. Katz then vowed that Israel would implement a plan, first floated by US President Donald Trump, to allow Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza to other countries.”.
Richard Shearmur 
