Three days after I sat in Start-Up Nation Central’s Tel Aviv headquarters watching SouthUp’s DefenceTech Accelerator present its third cohort, I was in a conference hall in Rēzekne, Latvia, a short drive from the Russian and Belarusian borders. The Latvian Dual-Use Export Forum had just opened, and before the first speaker, organizers told the room what to do if a cell broadcast alert arrived: “If you receive such an alert, please remain calm. If necessary, the event will be paused.”
I know that kind of instruction well. As Director of Innovation Diplomacy at HaMitbah, the Western Negev Innovation Authority, I work with communities that have lived with the tzeva adom (“red alert”) siren for two decades. In Rēzekne, the same warning now arrives as a phone alert, and it is new.
Latvia sits on NATO’s easternmost frontier, and its awakening was abrupt. Krists Avots, parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, told the forum: “On the seventh of May, in this very city, two drones came by. The government fell. We were caught somewhat unprepared.”
Economics Minister Viktors Valainis reported that defense spending has risen from 3% to over 5% of GDP and called the dual-use sector “both an existential defense necessity and a strategic economic engine.”
My argument is simple: Israel’s border communities have experience that NATO’s eastern flank needs now, and Israel should offer it deliberately, through diplomacy, instead of waiting for individual companies to find their own way in.
Consider what the Western Negev has produced: More than 115 startups applied to SouthUp’s third cohort, and seven were accepted. Three speak directly to Latvia’s problem.
SelfS builds a microchip lighter than a single battery that lets drones map underground tunnels with no GPS signal. Cipax makes a self-healing communications link that keeps pilots connected through electronic warfare blackouts. Baxera’s passive acoustic array detects low-flying drones by sound alone, without emitting a signal an enemy can trace.
Sderot and the Western Negev have spent 20 years building and testing defense and resilience technology under fire.
Each of these innovations was shaped by conditions directly related to the Gaza border, and each answers threats Latvian officials described to me: jamming, low-altitude incursions and infiltration routes along a forested frontier.
Latvia is a serious partner. It is already the seventh-largest drone exporter in Europe. Jevgēņijs Rjaščenko-Šaraks, head of innovation and research policy at the Latvian Ministry of Defense, walked me through a concrete path: Route Israeli technologies through the Autonomous Systems Competence Center; run live trials under heavy jamming at the Sēlija military range; and establish a local corporate footprint to compete for European Defense Fund bids.
Laura Štrovalde, deputy director of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, described a 2 billion euro dual-use pipeline and said international joint ventures need local incorporation to anchor production. Irīna Rubinčika, the agency’s representative in Israel, made the whole trip possible.
Hardware is only part of the exchange. Israel’s Ambassador to Latvia Sandra Simovich told me that another Western Negev export deserves attention: societal resilience. Two decades of pressure have produced what she calls a resilience triangle, linking rapid emergency response, mental health support and community trauma infrastructure. When the Latvian ambassador to Israel visited the region in June, delegates toured Sha’ar HaNegev and the Sderot International Resilience Center, where an emergency simulator is being built to train diplomats, medical leaders and first responders to operate under fire.
Līna Farber, who directs the group Jewnited.lv and brings Baltic delegations to Israel, described the gap on the Latvian side: “What people are not prepared for here is resilience tech, learning first responders and how to deal with emergencies.” Phone alerts, she told me, have suddenly brought the border into daily life.
I want to be exact about the comparison: Rēzekne and Sderot share a place on a border line, and little else. Sderot and the Western Negev have spent 20 years building and testing defense and resilience technology under fire. Rēzekne is only now recognizing that it needs the same. That gap is an opening for Israel. Talks are already underway with an investment fund interested in bringing newly developed drone technologies to field trials in Latvia and then to the battlefield in Ukraine.
The morning after the summit, I stood along the border corridor and looked east past pine woods and small lakes. The electronic warfare disrupting GPS signals over the Baltic Sea runs on the same doctrine used against tactical networks in the Middle East, and the loitering munitions crossing into Baltic airspace share a lineage with the ones I have watched fall near my home.
Jerusalem should treat the Baltic states as a strategic priority. The foreign and defense ministries can coordinate with Latvia’s investment agency, pair Negev testing grounds with Latvian ranges and back exchanges between Israeli and Latvian universities. Israel has spent two decades learning how a border community survives. Latvia is ready to listen, and the offer should be made now.
