Tech leader and former Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday with the goal of turning Israel into a global leader in artificial intelligence.
Their conversation occurred shortly before President Donald Trump and Netanyahu’s meeting on Monday.
Netanyahu spoke with Musk from Florida alongside Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev and Israeli National AI Directorate head Erez Eskel.
“The Prime Minister and Musk spoke at length about the advancement and development of AI technologies in Israel,” the Israeli prime minister’s office wrote on X. “The Prime Minister said that we intend to catapult Israel forward and turn it into a global leader in the field, exactly as we did with cyber and other technologies.”
Netanyahu’s office said Musk agreed to attend the Smart Transportation Conference in Israel and discussed Tesla and legislation related to autonomous vehicles. Musk owns xAI, which recently integrated AI chatbot Grok into War Department systems.
Musk has been a supporter of Israel and endorsed a new law governing self-driving vehicles in the country last month. He’s met with Netanyahu multiple times over the past few years, and the Israeli prime minister came to his defense when he was accused of flashing a Nazi salute during Trump’s inauguration celebration.
“@elonmusk is being falsely smeared. Elon is a great friend of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Israel holds a unique place in the AI conversation. The country drew criticism for using AI-assisted targeting, which drew ethical concerns for misidentifying targets. The technology has been a “game-changer” for the Israeli military, it said, but has been used during one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent memory for soldiers and civilians in Gaza.
The Israeli military said the technology has minimized, not increased, civilian casualties in the Gaza war.
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“These AI tools make the intelligence process more accurate and more effective,” an Israeli military statement to the Associated Press said. “They make more targets faster, but not at the expense of accuracy, and many times in this war they’ve been able to minimize civilian casualties.”
Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu on Monday was aimed at bringing the Gaza war to a permanent end.