quirks one of the basic truths of the human condition is that people love to load -- two float , and there's no better place than here at the dead sea in israel, where without any effort at all, large mammals can achieve buoyancy. tore's some ritual involved doing this place the right way. you need to fall into some mud,

lather up, and then relax with a good read. sorry to do that to your white shirt, jack, you handsome devil. wonderful sides, and this is one of its finest. tourists, and tv hosts all come here. you cannot help but float .ogether for a wild and laugh it's unfettered -- or at least less fettered -- joy. -- float together for a while and laugh. it would be nice if the story could remain this simple, but it can't. to come to israel is to witness the fierce tensions that bloom

over this country firsthand. walled off and fenced in arab cities. tourist spots turned quiet due to the stabbings and random acts of violence that have become so prevalent over the past tw's. on this episode of "hello world ," i will dig into how the constant threat of war gave birth to the israeli technology industry. evolved into a , won thousandst upon thousands of startups. jerusalem,hrough controlling my ipad with my eyes, at the gaza strip,

checking out everything up close, and in nazareth, i will meet with the man who wants to make sure no one gets left behind in israel's race to animate. ♪ ryan: silicon valley may be home to some of the biggest tech giants in the world, but it's being challenged like never before. crazy tech geniuses are popping up all over the planet making things that will blow your mind. my name is ashlee vance. i'm an author, journalist, and i'm on a quest to find the most innovative tech innovations and meet the beautiful freaks behind them. the israeli military dominates much of the country's culture. at 18 years of age, men and

women head off for tina or three .ears of required service they find themselves here dealing with the most intense of situations. these young soldiers in the israeli defense forces also learn to use some of the most advanced military technology around. to see how the idf has given israel edge, i decided to check it out up close, to see the iron dome. i have traveled to ashkelon, the coastal city just south of tel aviv that nudges up against the gaza strip. >> it has 20 missiles on it.

you can see the red light flashing, which means armed and ready. ashlee: one of the dozen or so iron dome batteries sits at the ready to intercept missiles and provide israel with a shield from aerial attacks. this lieutenant colonel oversees its operation. is this as close as we get? >> this is as close as we get. it took just three years and $100 million to develop this defense system that relies on radar that instantly detects when a missile has been fired. if an attack is headed toward a populated area, iron dome launches a missile of its own. it is said it is taken down more than 1000 missiles since it was launched in 2011 with a 90%

success rate. some people question the accuracy of these figures. what is clear, though, is that on intercepting projectile's while developing a cost-benefit analys on human life are among the most advanced in the world. site, like many, is temporary. >> everything here can be moved out in a matter of hours. we moved around a lot to make sure no one knows where we are at any time. here,: unless you live it's difficult to imagine how much technology has transformed the lives of ordinary israelis.

>> when you see your house that you are protecting and your annalee and your friends and your soldiers, it's a great sense of pride. for many palestinians, iron dome means something else. it is just the most visible part of an expensive israeli security apparatus that includes drones, checkpoints, and espionage technology. those tools have been put to immediate use in the west bank, gaza, and throughout israel. terrorist bombings have declined. missiles have met their match. protestr tech forms of are on the rise. what has been remarkable is the speed at which young israelis take these types of tools and

privatize them once they leave the army. time or war, israeli innovations pop up throughout the world. coming up next, we will check out and idf inspired startup that wants to send laboratories to space. do do people want to experiments here? >>

♪ ashlee: forget dull strip malls and office parks. the startups of tel aviv come to life here in the city's vibrant neighborhoods. they feed off the city's energy, and the employees have a chance to escape their cubicles and live a little. i came here to meet one of the people that shaped the israeli start-up lifestyle. shlomo kramer served in the idf almost 25 years ago, and his first company checkpoint invented the freaking firewall. shlomo: we always had the start-up bug and we talked about the stuff we would do afterward, and it was always about startups. ashlee: like a lot of israel's tech elites, shlomo got his

start with unit 8200, the top branch of the idf. group 8200, right, is this famous part of idf that is equivalent to nsa in the united states? shlomo: it was the bedrock of everything else that has been done afterwards. as a 22 and 23-year-old, i was the head of the unit, 20 people, very high responsibility. you know, i was making decisions in millions of dollars. ashlee: the idf functions sort of like a never-ending networking event. the first question at a cocktail party is what unit you served in? for members of unit 8200, these

led to israeli dominating the market. what makes israel so well-suited to startups and technology? shlomo: there is always an infusion of new talent from the idf, and with the infusion of talent, you have the recipe for a successful start-up nation. ashlee: shlomo has invested in dozens of israeli companies. to see the extreme end of what the idf can inspire, i have gone to herzliya, a small beach town and tech hub that brushes right up against tel aviv. it is here that a company called space pharma has set out to make some interstellar drugs. ♪ >> if humanity would like to move out of earth, they must learn the microgravity conditions in order to survive on their wayo mars and to other places. ashlee: ceo yossi yamin usedo head up the idf satellite program. then, he and his comrades hit on a big possibly profitable idea. they assembled some space

, software and science experts and set to work trying to make life easier on astronauts. yossi: we cut the middlemen. the astronaut is not the scientist. he needs to survive, he needs to eat, he needs to pray, he needs to sleep. he cannot do too much science. ashlee: space pharma has built a shoebox-sized laboratory that will hitch rides into orbit on rockets from companies like spacex with the goal of shrinking down state-of-the-art scientific equipment and automating how it runs experiments. this will allow a great deal of science to take place on the international space station. molly: so we are going to go in a laboratory here. ashlee: thank you for the booties. [laughter] molly: you are welcome. it is a pretty small laboratory but the equipment is big. and this you can't bring to space. so, the whole idea of what we are trying to do is and what we are looking at is how we take this equipment and bring it down to a small scale. ashlee: a typical laboratory has refrigerator-sized machines, microscopes, pipettes, and a host of liquids and chemicals. it is a very manual, messy

process that is tough enough to pull off on earth. molly: we just looked at all the large equipment. this is what we fit it in. ashlee: research has already led to the development of new drugs and insights about organisms. molecules floating about freely in solutions can behave more naturally than when they are smeared flat on a petri dish. molly: everyday our life is dominated by this lens of gravity. what goes up, must come down. when we remove that lens of gravity, we learn something new. ashlee: space pharma wants to use these machines to see what space can teach us. to pull myself out of the clouds and learn more about israel's startup culture, i went for a walk on the beach back in tel aviv with another local tech legend. [laughter] adi: hello. welcome to israel. ashlee: thank you very much. armed with a law degree, and an

mba, adi soffer-teeni has led a number of young companies and helped spur on israel's technology culture. now, she runs facebook's israel operations. adi: today we have something like 5300 startups in israel. by the way, there is no one country in a world that has that amount of start up success except for the u.s. ok? 1400 startups in 2015. 1400 new startups. ♪ ashlee: women must serve alongside men in the military here. adi once hoped to fly jets, but because of the gender restrictions at the time, she ended up evaluating who could become a pilot. she sees the time in the air force as crucial to her career. what is the uniqueness of the female experience in israel because of the military service? it must have some long-term effects? adi: yeah, i absolutely think it does.

women in israel probably start their career life with more confidence, with a feeling that they also can, but what we have done in israel in terms of women taking part, no, we are not -- i think that in israel we are probably because of the military, because of start-up nation, because of the culture, i think that we are probably closer to achieve that, but we are definitely not still there. ♪ ashlee: after our chat, adi insisted that i go revel in tel aviv's famous nightlife. ♪ ashlee: tel aviv stands out as one of the great surprises of my travels. people head out late here, often starting dinner at 9:00 p.m. the bartenders look for any excuse to do shots with their patrons, and their patrons -- or

at least this patron -- looked for any excuse to oblige. the beach, the old city, the boardwalk joyrides -- this is a wonderous place that feels at times as if it exists within its own bubble, separate from the rest of the country. ♪ ashlee: next up, i travel to jerusalem and visit a startup that puts a new twist on peering into the future. ♪

♪ ashlee: from the cosmopolitan coast, i climb the winding mountain road to jerusalem. tel aviv may be the beating heart of the israeli tech world, but most jews consider jerusalem to be the country's soul. i'm ashlee. and you know what they say about the soul? ♪ yitzi: if you think about it, the most basic thing of human communication is eye contact. by the device seeing you, you get a whole 'nother world of interaction. ashlee: the window to the soul.

yitzi: window -- exactly, the window to the soul, or the window to the brain. look around, look to the right, look to the left. ashlee: yiti kacynski is the cofounder and ceo of umoove based here in jerusalem. the company has developed a way to replace eye tracking gear that usually costs tens of thousands of dollars, with algorithms that can run on an ipad or smartphone. it is a little disorienting at first to try to play a videogame just by moving your head. so you see, head movement, eye movement, iris movement, and blinks, and then -- yitzi: and then analysis of that. ashlee: kacynski hopes the technology will give us rapid insight into conditions like concussion. this is like when they shine the white light that you have to follow? yitzi: exactly. and then based on the score, we can tell if i have a concussion. ashlee: you don't have a concussion? yitzi: i don't have a concussion.

♪ ashlee: kaczynski thinks that these hard scice applications with real-world use distinguish israel's tech scene, especially for jerusalem startups. yitzi: people are looking for real, deep tech. you can't say you're making an app for taking pictures of food. you have to give a real explanation to your jewish grandmother about what is that for? ♪ ashlee: this is the damascus gate. it is not that far at all from where we were earlier today. there is a sniper up in the window who is guarding against a lot of the recent stabbings that have been going on. jerusalem is trying to turn into a technology city, and this is the reality of how these businesses have to come to life in this type of environment.

the moment you step into jerusalem, it is clear that the city carries with it the weight of thousands of years of history. everyone in the middle east, and by extension the world, has their eyes fixed here, on the al-aqsa mosque, on the wailing wall, on the spot where it is believed jesus was crucified. this is a small spot of land with outsized global importance under heavy guard, carved into minute splices, and fortified with walls. those barriers went up to curb violence based on ancient disputes. seen another wa they become blockades that hold backodern opportunity. ♪

ashlee: i traveled north from jerusalem to nazareth. the largest arab enclave in israel, a place with a laid-back vibe and a very specific flavor. fadi: we can see 10-15 places just for shawarma. because of that i call it the shawarma valley. ashlee: shawarma valley? fadi: you have the silicon valley, we have shawarma valley. [laughter] fadi: and we are in the middle of the shawarma valley. ashlee: fadi swidan has opened israel's first arab technology accelerator, and he knows everyone in town. arabs do not have to serve in the military, and lack the tech connections supplied by the idf. fadi has set to work to try to fix this and to help arab engineers benefit from israel's tech boom. in a controversial move, he is

linking them up with tech mobiles who have come out from a a firm known for spooky security and espionage folks. fadi: anyone is going out of 8200, they are thinking about this. they want to graduate to a special ngo that helps them. our community is not so popular to have a start up because it is a new industry. it is very risky. ♪ ashlee: fadi is a rebel. he was the only arab in his class in theech eld in his class at israel's elite, technical university. inside of this building, he shepherded dozens of like-minded engineers. they are building software, consumer services, and hardware in an effort to make sure that the arab-speaking world has the latest and greatest technology. fadi: i think if we can be part of that ecosystem in tel aviv, we can create a standard of life

for the arab community here. ashlee: because israel is known as a sort of start up nation but it has left out a big chunk of people. fadi: exactly. there is two committees, arab and jewish orthodox. the government now is putting some money to a engage them with a start up nation in because they believe that if we are not part of that, that start up nation will be somehow slowed here, and we cannot continue to be the second place after the silicon valley. ashlee: a handful of his companies have already taken off and made headway in billion-dollar industries, but it has proven tough for them to find investment dollars. there is a clear bias against arab companies, and many of their backers have opted to remain anonymous or to funnel their investments through offshore accounts. but fadi remains optimistic. fadi: in the coming years, we will maybe have big success stories, the first unicorn, a startup from our community.

this maybe can attract more and more people to be part of that. and others to be a part of the investing. [bells ringing] ashlee: on that hopeful note, my time in israel came to an end. it is understandable that tourists have made fewer visits here in recent months, that the markets have grown quieter, and the mood in the streets more tense. this place can seem daunting from afar. to visit israel, though, is to experience the extraordinary. so many parts of our nature -- joy, conflict, conformity, and imagination -- swirl around together in confounding and

sping ways. i am not sure that anyone will really ever make sense of all of this, but it's spectacular to witness and feel, even if just for a short while. ♪ ashlee: as for my next stop, well, that would be iceland, home of alien landscapes, an astonishing amount of fish, and space warlords. ♪

♪ emily: it is one of the fastest-growing apps the world has ever seen that has revolutionized the way we express ourselves in a single photo. kevin systrom turned down a job for mark zuckerberg in college, shared a desk with jack dorsey as an intern with what would become twitter and in 2010, launched instagram as we kw it. two years later, he reunited with zuckerberg and agreed to sell instagram to facebook for $1 billion. the company had 13 employees and 30 million users. today, over half a billion people on the planet use