For 37 years, Adm. (ret.) Michael S. Rogers served in the US security establishment, including in senior positions as head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and commander of the US Army Cyber Command.
He served under two presidents who were very different in their policies and personalities, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and had access to the deepest secrets of the world’s greatest power.
As someone who was involved in crucial US intelligence issues, Rogers knows a thing or two about living in an uncertain world. But the kind of resilience he sees in the Israeli people, he said, he has not seen anywhere else.
“It’s truly extraordinary how this country functions even in such situations,” he said in an interview with Globes during a recent trip to Israel. “I was in work meetings in Tel Aviv when an air raid siren went off. We all went down to the protected space, with no pressure, no drama, opened our laptops, and continued the meeting from inside the shelter, as if nothing had happened. As an American, I was stunned. We would have had panic, evacuation, a commission of inquiry. Here, they go back to work after 20 minutes, as if it was nothing. It’s surreal – but it’s also strength. The society here has learned to go on functioning amid chaos.”
Nevertheless, as someone who comes here several times a year, as a partner in Israeli venture capital group Team8 and advisory committee chairman for cyber unicorn Claroty, he is aware of the despair and frustration.
Israeli Tech (credit: JERUSALEM POST)“My previous visit was in January this year, and I can already sense a change. People are asking, ‘When will it end? How will it end?’ There is weariness, a feeling that we’re stuck in a loop.
“Perhaps this isn’t unique to Israel. I see the same sense of lack of clarity in the US, in Europe, even in Australia and East Asia. We are in an era where old certainties – political, technological, geopolitical – are being shaken, and the West is struggling to respond. But it’s more intense in Israel because there’s a real war here.”
Rogers believes that October 7 was not only an Israeli ...
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