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Lost in the noise of the election, Intel last week signed an agreement to acquire Classiq, an Israeli quantum computing software company. It is the largest quantum acquisition in the world to date, and the chipmaker’s biggest Israeli purchase since it bought Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017. The companies did not disclose terms. Globes put the price at $2.2 billion; Calcalist and Bloomberg reported about $2.3 billion in cash and shares. Either way, it is more than three times the roughly $600 million valuation Classiq reached in its last funding round. Founded in 2020, Classiq makes software that lets developers build quantum applications without specifying every quantum gate, which its founders liken to a Windows for quantum computers. Given my absolute ignorance of the field, I am tempted to believe them. There are plenty of winners. Classiq’s three founders are CEO Nir Minerbi; Chief Product Officer Amir Naveh; and his father, Chief Technology Officer Yehuda Naveh, a former senior figure at IBM’s Israeli research arm. Each reportedly stands to collect $80 million to $100 million. But the biggest winner may be Israel itself. The deal buys something Israel is in desperate search of: strategic indispensability. Intel is no longer just a chipmaker. Since Washington took a stake in it, it has become a national asset of the United States, the backbone of America’s bid to rebuild its own chip industry and increasingly a defense contractor in all but name. Quantum computing sits at the top of the Pentagon’s list of future technologies, and by buying Classiq, Intel has made an Israeli team part of the core of America’s quantum effort. Israel needs to solder itself into the international technology supply chain. So long as the world’s computers run on Zionist operating systems, British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and his fellow vote-harvesters will have to think twice before expanding sanctions.