‘Israel’s 9/11’: Political analysts react to deadly Hamas attack

Published

2 years ago

October 8, 2023

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Children are seen in a destroyed house after Israeli attacks in Gaza City, Gaza on October 07, 2023.

Mustafa Hassona | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

From being labeled “Israel’s 9/11,” to the culmination of a “50-year time bomb,” political analysts are reacting to the Israel-Hamas conflict and contemplating what happens next as the fighting extends into a second day.

At dawn Saturday, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an infiltration into Israel by land, sea and air. The attack came hours after a barrage of rockets were sent from Gaza into Israel. The offensive occurred during a major Jewish holiday, and a day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.

The attack certainly “did not come out of the blue,” said Dan Steinbock, founder of global consultancy firm Difference Group.

Massive attacks by Hamas leadership into Israel… This is no less than Israel’s 9/11.

Ian Bremmer

President of Eurasia Group

“The Israeli-Hamas War is a logical result of 50 years of failed military policies,” Steinbock said in an e-mail to CNBC. He added that the attack marked the first major direct conflict within the Israeli territory since the country’s founding.

“It is a game-changer in the Israeli-Palestine conflict,” Steinbock added.

At the time of publication, at least 250 Israelis have reportedly been killed with more than 1,860 injured, according to NBC News. The Palestinian Healthy Ministry, meanwhile, has recorded 256 deaths and 1,790 injuries in Gaza.

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Israel’s 9/11?

“Massive attacks by Hamas leadership into Israel … This is no less than Israel’s 9/11,” said the president of Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer, in reference to the scale of the attack.

Israel is in its “strongest geopolitical position” in decades, Bremmer said in a video analysis, elaborating on Israel’s normalization of ties with various nations. Bremmer cited the Abraham Accords, which opened diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, as well as Morocco and Bahrain. More recently, talks of potentially normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel had been in the cards.

“And if you are the leadership of Hamas, refusing to accept Israel’s right to exist … watching the politics of the region turn against you … Well, certainly that is part of the reason why Hamas would have decided to engage in this level of unprecedented strikes against Israel,” Bremmer concluded.

‘Massive intelligence failure’

The attack also marked a “massive intelligence and defense failure for Israel,” Bremmer highlighted, saying it was an oversight stemming from the government’s new judicial reforms.

Israel’s defense system is hallmarked by its “Iron Dome,” an anti-rocket air defense system shielding its heavily populated areas since 2011. The dome claims to have a 96% success rate, however, some of Hamas’ rockets have bypassed the defenses and struck buildings inside Israel.

Rockets launched towards Israel from the northern Gaza Strip and response from the Israeli missile defense system known as the Iron Dome leave streaks through the sky on May 14, 2021 in Gaza City, Gaza.

Fatima Shbair | Getty Images

For months, Israel has been beleaguered by political turmoil following controversial judicial reforms pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

And that, according to Bremmer, “has clearly distracted Israeli intelligence. It’s also distracted the Israeli military,” he said, many of whom said they were not willing to serve in the military if the judicial overhaul proceeded.

Saudi-Israeli normalization?

And what does the fighting mean for both parties’ relations with other Middle Eastern counterparts?

For one, analysts expect the conflict to derail a U.S.-brokered negotiation between Israel and Saudi Arabia to establish formal relations with each other.

“The violence has certainly poured cold water on the possibility of a fast-tracked Israeli-Saudi normalization process and reminded the international community that the issue of Palestine requires urgent conflict management and mediation,” said Chatham House’s Middle East North Africa Programme Director Sanam Vakil.

From what we see so far … [this] is a Gaza and Israel war. So far there is no sign that Iran and Hezbollah plan to join. As long as this is the case the global impact is limited.

Zvi Eckstein

emeritus professor of Economics at Tel Aviv University

Just a few weeks back, Saudi Arabia had told the Biden administration of its decision to freeze efforts toward normalizing relations with Israel. According to the Saudi-owned newspaper Elaph, an Israeli official had attributed the suspension to the Israeli government’s unwillingness to make any concessions to the Palestinians.

“The Israeli-Saudi deal which was close to getting done is now over,” Bremmer said. “If anything was accomplished that Hamas wanted, that would be the single biggest thing,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has stated it does not support the attacks, and has joined global calls for a de-escalation.

“The kingdom recalls its repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Saturday.

Does the conflict spread?

“From what we see so far … [this] is a Gaza and Israel war. So far there is no sign that Iran and Hezbollah plan to join. As long as this is the case the global impact is limited,” Zvi Eckstein, former deputy governor at the Bank of Israel, told CNBC via e-mail.

Eckstein, who is currently emeritus professor of economics at Tel Aviv University, said he does not see any global impact like that of the Russia-Ukraine war.

However, that may not stay for long, should Iran be found to have had a hand in the attacks, Bremmer said.

“Certainly, if it is found that Iran helped to plan these attacks by Hamas, that would be a game changer and would probably lead to Israeli strikes against Iranian military,” he said.

“The broader question is whether or not we see ongoing military collaboration for Hamas, from Iran, from Syria … that could of course lead to an expansion of the war.”

On Sunday, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group confirmed it launched attacks on three sites in the Shebaa Farms — a strip of land that sits at the intersection of the Lebanese-Syrian border and the Golan Heights, which is occupied by Israel. The Israeli Defense Force confirmed it has returned fire and “struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure.”

Environment

Fresh TSLA lawsuits, V2X options, and the USAF is blowing up Cybertrucks

Published

3 hours ago

August 7, 2025

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Fresh TSLA lawsuits, V2X options, and the USAF is blowing up Cybertrucks

Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!

Today’s episode is brought to you by retrospec—makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure. Electrek listeners can get 10% off their next ride until August 14 with the exclusive code ELECTREK10 only at retrospec.com.

An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).

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Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.

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Environment

Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer looks dead as more execs leave for competing startup

Published

3 hours ago

August 7, 2025

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Tesla's Dojo supercomputer looks dead as more execs leave for competing startup

Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.

Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.

Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.

It has been running into delays for years.

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We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla’s chip-making effort, left the company.

Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023.

For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.

Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:

Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.

DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.

It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.

The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.

While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.

The CEO said in June:

Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.

During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”

Electrek’s Take

It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.

Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.

Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.

I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.

When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.

TSMC is set to produce Tesla’s new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip.

I think the bigger concern from this report is that it’s the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.

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Environment

Block shares pop 11% on full-year guidance boost

Published

5 hours ago

August 7, 2025

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Block shares pop 11% on full-year guidance boost

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, on Friday, June 4, 2021.

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Block shares jumped in extended trading on Thursday after the fintech company increased its forecast for the year.

Here is how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.

Earnings per share: 62 cents adjusted vs. 69 cents expected

Block doesn’t report a revenue figure, but said gross profit rose 14% from a year earlier to $2.54 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.46 billion for the quarter. Gross payment volume increased 10% to $64.25 billion.

Block raised its guidance for full-year gross profit to $10.17 billion, representing 14% growth from a year earlier. In its prior earnings report, Block said gross profit for the year would come in at $9.96 billion.

The company expects full-year adjusted operating income of $2.03 billion, or a 20% margin. For the third quarter, the company expects gross profit to grow 16% from a year ago to $2.6 billion, with an operating margin of 18%.

Square payment volume in the quarter grew 10% from a year earlier.

Block faces growing competition from rivals such as Toast and Fiserv‘s Clover, though its Square business still gained share during the quarter in areas such as retail and food and beverage.

Block shares were down 10% this year as of Thursday’s close, while the Nasdaq is up 10%. Last month, Block was added to the S&P 500.

— CNBC’s Robert Hum contributed to this report.