Video summary
Twenty-five years ago, Daniel Lewin became the first victim of the September 11 attacks while seated on American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. A dual citizen who had served as a captain in Israel's elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, Lewin was not only an intellectual force but also a man defined by incredible warmth and humanity. Born in Colorado and raised in Israel, he combined physical strength with articulate speech and deep social awareness, distinguishing himself through both his military feats and his compassionate character. His life story reflects a unique blend of American and Israeli cultures, making him a powerful symbol of what it means to be an American-Israeli who dedicated his life to service and innovation.
After leaving the military, Lewin pursued advanced studies in mathematics and electrical engineering at MIT, where he worked under the mentorship of Professor Tom Leighton to develop groundbreaking algorithms that improved internet traffic management during the dot-com era. These innovations formed the foundation of Akamai Technologies, a company that eventually became a global leader in content delivery networks with a market capitalization of $15 billion. On the night before the attacks, Lewin and his colleagues were struggling to save their company from financial difficulties when the tragedy occurred. Despite being armed only with a Blackberry, a laptop, and casual clothing, he instinctively rose up to fight back against the terrorists, attempting to protect the flight crew and passengers in a final act of courage that aligned perfectly with his military training and moral convictions.
Lewin's heroic efforts were confirmed by reports from the cockpit, where he was killed while trying to defend the stewardesses and stop the hijackers, becoming the first casualty among nearly 3,000 lives lost that day. He left behind a wife and two young sons, leaving his community devastated by such a profound loss at the age of 31. The irony of his death is poignantly highlighted by the fact that Akamai's technology proved its worth during the very attacks that claimed his life, successfully keeping websites operational amidst unprecedented global traffic. His legacy endures not only through the technological systems he helped create but also through the countless lives he touched as a family man, soldier, tech visionary, and hero who chose to stand up against evil even in his final moments.
Today, Daniel Lewin's story serves as a powerful reminder of the values he held dear, including Jewish ethics, patriotism, and unwavering bravery. His life demonstrates how one individual can leave an indelible mark on the world through innovation, service, and moral courage. As we remember him 25 years later, it is clear that his spirit continues to inspire people around the globe, encouraging others to live with purpose, integrity, and compassion. By sharing his story, we honor not only a great man but also the enduring hope he represented for peace, unity, and the strength of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable tragedy.
Read the full video transcript
25 years ago, [music] American Airlines
Flight 11 was hijacked by five al-Qaeda
terrorists and crashed into the North
Tower of the World Trade Center. After
this, three more planes were [music]
hijacked and crashed into the South
Tower, the Pentagon, and a field in
Pennsylvania. On that very first plane,
seated in between several of the
terrorists, was American Israeli Daniel
Leuen, an IDF captain who founded one of
the largest tech companies in the world.
It is believed that he tried to stop the
attack from happening, but he was
murdered before the plane hit the tower,
making him the first casualty out of the
almost 3,000 that day. This is the story
of Danny Leuen. When I first met Danny
within a few months, I said, "Danny,
you're either going to be the future
prime minister of Israel or the next
Bill Gates at Microsoft or both." Danny
Leuen was born in Denver, Colorado in
1970 and moved to Israel with his family
aged 14. After graduating high school,
he enlisted in the IDF, joining the
elite Sierat unit and rising to the rank
of officer. He was an absolute character
in the sense that he was
really strong and worked out a lot and
you could see his muscles, but he was
also incredibly articulate. He was
intellectually curious. He was socially
aware. He was someone that would give
high fives and back slapping and fist
bumps and hugs. He really exhibited
incredible warmth. So it wasn't just his
intellectual abilities and later his
feats in Sire Madal, as you know, the
most elite commando unit in the IDF, but
it was also his humanity and his
character that really distinguished him.
After his army service, he studied
mathematics and electrical engineering
at the Techneon Institute in Hifur while
also working part-time for IBM in
Israel, where he rose up the ranks to
project leader and research fellow,
helping them develop the Genesis Pro
Tool. In 1996, he moved back to the
United States for graduate studies at
MIT.
>> He was absolutely blown away that he got
a scholarship at MIT. But Danny was
accepted everywhere. He was accepted at
Stanford and Caltech and Princeton and
Harvard etc. And the person he wanted to
study with was Tom Leighton. I met Danny
uh for the first time when he came to
MIT as a graduate student in uh
algorithms and theoretical computer
science at MIT. I did select him as my
teaching assistant and got to know him
uh as an incredibly smart and and
hardworking uh person and uh we started
working on research together.
>> Tom Leighton was more than a professor
for Danny. He became a mentor. Together
they worked on algorithms that would
speed up internet traffic which in the
'90s would often buckle under heavy
strain. This was the basis of his
award-winning thesis, parts of which
would be used in the company that
Leighton and Luen co-founded, [music]
Akami Technologies. You know, initially
dubdubdubdub stood for worldwide weight
uh because when there was popular
content uh a lot of people would be
stuck waiting because the way the web
was architected uh didn't support that
and the algorithms that we developed
would make the web work so we could
scale and so you wouldn't [music] have
problems with flash crowds and the
worldwide weight. And then when we
started Akami, things grew pretty
quickly because the web was, you know,
really just starting to to scale up and
so the company grew quickly. Akami rode
the wave of the dotcom bubble at the
turn of the century, but was also badly
affected by the market crash that
followed. Danny was traveling back and
forth from California frequently trying
to come up with ideas to save the
company. I remember the the night before
9/11, Danny and I were up very late at
night uh working on a largecale
reduction in force uh because you know a
lot of our customers were going broke
[music] uh we weren't able to raise
money uh and the stock value had
declined a lot and then of course the
horrible tragedy on 911.
>> Dany's flight took off at 7:59 a.m. and
it struck the World Trade Center 47
minutes later. But Danny didn't go down
without a fight.
>> You know, it was reported live by the
stewardist from the back of the plane
that, you know, the person in Danny's
seat had gotten up and tried to fight
off the terrorists and was was [music]
killed, you know, in the process of
trying to defend the stewardesses in the
cockpit. And [music]
you know, Danny obviously uh fluent in
Arabic, uh highly skilled operative,
[music] and there's no question he would
have gotten up and done everything in
his power to stop uh the attack. The
fact that Danny, who was seated in
business class and was armed with
nothing but a Blackberry, a laptop, pair
of jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers,
that he decided to rise up and f fight
back against the ring leader of 9/11
along with five other terrorists
surprised no one that knew him. We knew
that instinctively
that's what Danny would do. That was
also based on Danny's training being a
captain in sire Matk. When he saw these
individuals enter the plane, he did the
math as we say in Hebrew. He knew me
naked me who's going up against whom.
And my belief and the belief of his
family and friends is that he in his gut
knew something was right. The fact that
he rose up from his seat and fought back
was completely in line with Danny's
character, his courage, his bravery, and
also his training.
>> Daniel Leuen was killed at the age of
31, leaving behind a wife and two sons,
both under the age of seven at the time.
>> It was a huge blow [music] losing Danny.
You know, he was like the heart and soul
of the company, a fabulous leader,
>> [music]
>> uh, you know, great visionary. So just
devastating and you know my best friend
and a lot of us you know just thought
the world of Danny.
>> Akami remains strong with a markets
capitalization of $15 billion 25 years
after his death. It is still used by
most internet servers to this day. One
of the ironies of this story, the
painful tragic ironies
is that Okami proved
its value during the most frenetic
and heavily traffked news day of that
era which was 911. So here Okami's job
was to keep all these websites
up and running. And when you had the
kind of traffic that we saw on 911, that
was the biggest test of the technology
that Dan Danny developed with his MIT
professor Tom Leighton, now the CEO.
>> But Dany's legacy lives on through the
many different lives he lived during his
31 years on Earth. the family man, the
IDF officer, the tech genius, and the
man whose final living actions were to
try and stop the deadliest terror attack
in history. For Danny, Jewish ethics
played a big role in his development.
And Danny was a very proud American
citizen, but he was an ardent Zionist.
And so one of the reasons I think Danny
would want his story [music] told is
that he would want people seeing Israel
in an accurate and positive light. And
he was the best of both American culture
and Israeli culture. He was the ultimate
poster boy for what being an American
Israeli is all about. Danny changed my
life
and the lives of countless other people.
We feel a debt to tell his story.
25 years after