The people behind the research.

JJ Ben-Joseph

JJ Ben-Joseph is a veteran national security operator who spent many years in high-profile roles at the National Security Agency before moving into strategic technology and venture-backed innovation. At IQT, he spearheaded dual-use investment work for the national security community, evaluated frontier technologies, advised founders building mission-ready products, and championed IQT's first investment in Israel.

That background shapes how Claw & Talon works. JJ is comfortable with the questions that sit between technology, mission, capital, and trust: Is the product real? Does it solve a problem that matters? Can the team sell into the market it is targeting? Are the strategic claims serious, or just language wrapped around ordinary software?

As editorial owner, JJ sets the sourcing standards for the startup database, reviews the sector frameworks and investment-case articles before publication, and handles corrections. The editorial policy describes that process, including how research tooling is used and where human judgment enters the pipeline.

For clients looking at Israeli startups, JJ can act as fractional eyes on the ground: helping source and interpret signals, facilitate founder and investor conversations, support technical diligence, and keep deal discussions grounded in both local context and U.S. national-security expectations.

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Research and advisory bench

Claw & Talon works with a focused bench of trusted operators, technologists, policy specialists, and investor-side diligence partners when a mandate requires deeper sector coverage or execution capacity. The model is deliberately lean: clients get senior judgment first, then targeted support around the specific questions that determine whether a company, program, or partnership is real.

Typical support includes technical reference checks, market-map expansion, founder and customer signal gathering, public-sector pathway analysis, export-control and procurement context, and preparation for sensitive cross-border conversations. The goal is not to add generic advisory volume. It is to bring the right specialist into the work at the moment their judgment changes the decision.

If you are building, funding, buying, or shaping policy around dual-use technology in the U.S.-Israel corridor, this is the place to start a serious conversation.