My question is, why is Israel so good at this? It seems to be at least the 4th cyber power of the world, after the US, Russia and China, if not actually on par or better.
I guess it is because it has been under the threat of larger enemies from its birth, so it must leverage whatever it has to survive. And once you grow an organization and let it loose, you don't have much control over it anymore, and it grows in the wild like a flower.
Don't forget the compounding effect. Say, one country (or city or community) decides to invest their efforts into area X (e.g. clock making in Switzerland). They do it and become better and better. As long as they keep doing that they can become #1 in the world. Regardless of any reasons "why them".
There's no reason Netherlands are better at chip lithography except that they're doing it (Dutch agriculture success can be attributed to good soils/climate/geolocation, but not chips). There's no reason Hollywood is better at filmmaking. Kinda chaos theory -- small changes to initial state leads to huge changes in the later outcomes.
I would like to give a real world example of this too.
If you want to do something artistic or start a business based around Art, Montreal is perfect for it, for the very same reason above.
Initially the govt invested in the arts to preserve French culture, which resulted in a lot of art infrastructure being made, cheap ateliers, fabric suppliers, paint suppliers, &c. Which attracted a lot of artists, which then increases the demand for the art infrastructure, which makes the city easy to make art in.
It makes it stupid easy to make stuff and find the skilled artisans you need to make it. Much easier than any other Canadian city I've lived in.
Back when I was a tech journalist, back in the 90s I visited Israel once and interviewed a number of their tech companies - admittedly most in the cyber-security space.
They ascribed a lot of the tech innovation to conscription - lots of the founders had learned a lot while in technical posts in the army and put that to use when they left.
Most people have heard of the Mossad, but Unit 8200 of the IDF deserves the same notoriety. The state selects bright young techies and trains them in the absolute state-of-the-art in cybercrime. What could go wrong?
>The unit is composed primarily of 18–21 year olds. As a result of the youth of the soldiers in the unit, and the shortness of their service period, the unit relies on selecting recruits with the ability for rapid adaptation and speedy learning. Afterschool programs for 16–18 year olds, teaching computer coding and hacking skills, also serve as feeder programs for the unit. Former Unit 8200 soldiers have founded and hold top positions in many international IT companies, including in Silicon Valley.
>According to the Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in 2015, "Unit 8200 is probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world and stands on a par with the NSA in everything except scale."
Multiple reasons. America gives Israel special protection for everything they do, Ashkenazi and general Jewish culture values education more than anyone outside of East Asia, and a lot of Soviet Jewish scientists had to work for the military so they came to Israel with cryptography or spy tech experience.
It has always been at odds with its neighbors and has persecuted its occupied people, for far too long. It has further facilitated other tyrant governments in the control of their people. The cyberwarfare industry in Israel is directly part of the controlled Defense Industry.
It is not under threat. It has sought to be a formidable threat to everyone.
It’s an interesting question. I would also guess that this kind of behaviour would be illegal for private companies in many countries even if you don’t do it domestically.
To a certain extent, i think its because Israel benefits from being seen as "scary" so there isn't as much pressure to keep this sort of thing on the down low, where in any other countries there is more pressure to keep grey-area stuff like this secret to prevent blowback.
And also it has help, it is unlikely it acts alone. Example Stuxnet. Israel has the talent so they are a convenient and willing proxy too for getting shady shit done.
Not really. Most countries don't face realistic threat of invasion, especially post world war 2.
Over the last 50 years, the probability of anyone invading france, canada, australia, etc has been next to 0. The only countries that really had to worry are the ones that straddle the regions of influence during the cold war.
This, plus all jewish folks I've ever met are naturally smart (not genetically of course, more like societal pressures/expectations/upbringing), hard working like few others, and seem to genuinely veer towards numerical jobs - banking and finance, math, applied math like security, cryptography, trading and so on. Very similar to Iranians to be fair, if US and British MI6 wouldnt be meddling in Iranian internal politics and supporting corrupt shah to steal all the oil cheaply those 2 would be together a superpower on global scale. Israel was very very lucky to not have any oil on their territories.
Plus very much present in US politics and power circles for some reason.
2 examples out of many - my boss is a prime example, every thought somehow infused with money (I work in a bank). My ex gf was exactly the same (she is a successful commodity trader). Just very, very different mindset to the core to say typical european one (I mention folks who are europeans and I've never been to Israel, so extrapolating a bit here).
Cope harder. The US guarantees the security of many nations, including many of the failed states in the Middle East. Look at Saudi Arabia, being completely helpless and begging everyone for help with the Houthis.
That's been the status quo for decades, but between Trump convincing folks that the US won't protect them and Iran convincing folks that the US can't protect them, and Hegseth focusing more on culture war stuff rather than policy objectives it's a guarantee that's looking a bit thin.
Because Israel is beset on all sides, geographically, digitally and conceptually, by forces hostile to western civilization who want to destroy them at the first opportunity. Being competent at cyber is useful defensively and offensively and the existential nature is highly motivating for the people working at it every day.
> Israel is beset on all sides, geographically, digitally and conceptually, by forces hostile to western civilization who want to destroy them at the first opportunity.
It's wild to me that if you wrote a fictional account of a vassal state that was constructed in the center of "hostile" territory, who exercised brutal violence on all it's neighbors, including strictly for the purpose of territorial acquisition, who was funded and supplied implements of war from it's super-state that vastly exceeded it's own production capabilities, which it used to win every conflict it found itself in, and who's officials regularly make the news for calling for outright genocide, everyone would call them the bad guys. Meanwhile in the real world we just call that Israel, and waive vaguely at "complicated politics."
Or if we are to be historically correct, Israel is a result of nation building as a result of breaking a British empire, just like 35 other countries across Asia, the Carribean and the Middle east.
That includes India, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, UAE, Yemen and others.
"Researchers also recommend that users at high risk of targeting use ad blockers, disable ad tracking, and regularly reset mobile ad IDs.". Not "recommend". Everyone must use uBlock Origin or at least some type of ad blocker in every device.
Then also mandatory pi-hole on every house.
Even if you are used by Windows OS, you must use an adblocker. Even if you use Chrome. On every browser.
This isn't a good answer for why a major cybersecurity story that largely throws the idea of doing business with any Israeli company ever into jeopardy (any company could be a state malware operation in disguise) to the 5th page when it was upvoted as much as it was.
I know HN's algorithm is weird, but this story deserves to stick to the front page for more than the couple of hours the last thread lasted. I don't agree with the algorithm automatically deplatforming controversial topics.
A company from countryX does something unkosher -- this means all companies from country X do everything unkosher :)
Good luck operating under these assumptions -- Show me a company that is a leader in tech or business that is not from a country where some companies did unkosher things
My question is, why is Israel so good at this? It seems to be at least the 4th cyber power of the world, after the US, Russia and China, if not actually on par or better.
I guess it is because it has been under the threat of larger enemies from its birth, so it must leverage whatever it has to survive. And once you grow an organization and let it loose, you don't have much control over it anymore, and it grows in the wild like a flower.
Don't forget the compounding effect. Say, one country (or city or community) decides to invest their efforts into area X (e.g. clock making in Switzerland). They do it and become better and better. As long as they keep doing that they can become #1 in the world. Regardless of any reasons "why them".
There's no reason Netherlands are better at chip lithography except that they're doing it (Dutch agriculture success can be attributed to good soils/climate/geolocation, but not chips). There's no reason Hollywood is better at filmmaking. Kinda chaos theory -- small changes to initial state leads to huge changes in the later outcomes.
I would like to give a real world example of this too.
If you want to do something artistic or start a business based around Art, Montreal is perfect for it, for the very same reason above.
Initially the govt invested in the arts to preserve French culture, which resulted in a lot of art infrastructure being made, cheap ateliers, fabric suppliers, paint suppliers, &c. Which attracted a lot of artists, which then increases the demand for the art infrastructure, which makes the city easy to make art in.
It makes it stupid easy to make stuff and find the skilled artisans you need to make it. Much easier than any other Canadian city I've lived in.
Also, how it stops to be. Specializations like that get disrupted if there's an easier way to make money (aka Resource curse, aka Dutch Disease [1]).
Same thing with Israel -- if they had some easier way to make moneys they would go for it. But constant demand from their defense kept if afloat.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Regarding the Netherlands, it doesn't hurt that TSMC happened to be cofounded by the same Dutch company that spun out ASML
Yep, exactly my point "small change in initial parameters".
Because it's the only country allowed get away with stuff that would be an international scandal if a normal country did it.
More specifically, it can steal military and tech secrets from the USA and keep getting invited back. Total impunity.
Not just the US. Israel gets to claim "holocaust" whenever they get caught. Europe also bows to Israel on a regular basis.
Did we forget about Snowden?
Everyone knows Snowden so I guess it was quite big scandal
Back when I was a tech journalist, back in the 90s I visited Israel once and interviewed a number of their tech companies - admittedly most in the cyber-security space.
They ascribed a lot of the tech innovation to conscription - lots of the founders had learned a lot while in technical posts in the army and put that to use when they left.
Most people have heard of the Mossad, but Unit 8200 of the IDF deserves the same notoriety. The state selects bright young techies and trains them in the absolute state-of-the-art in cybercrime. What could go wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
>The unit is composed primarily of 18–21 year olds. As a result of the youth of the soldiers in the unit, and the shortness of their service period, the unit relies on selecting recruits with the ability for rapid adaptation and speedy learning. Afterschool programs for 16–18 year olds, teaching computer coding and hacking skills, also serve as feeder programs for the unit. Former Unit 8200 soldiers have founded and hold top positions in many international IT companies, including in Silicon Valley.
>According to the Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in 2015, "Unit 8200 is probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world and stands on a par with the NSA in everything except scale."
Multiple reasons. America gives Israel special protection for everything they do, Ashkenazi and general Jewish culture values education more than anyone outside of East Asia, and a lot of Soviet Jewish scientists had to work for the military so they came to Israel with cryptography or spy tech experience.
> it has been under the threat of larger enemies
It has always been at odds with its neighbors and has persecuted its occupied people, for far too long. It has further facilitated other tyrant governments in the control of their people. The cyberwarfare industry in Israel is directly part of the controlled Defense Industry.
It is not under threat. It has sought to be a formidable threat to everyone.
It’s an interesting question. I would also guess that this kind of behaviour would be illegal for private companies in many countries even if you don’t do it domestically.
To a certain extent, i think its because Israel benefits from being seen as "scary" so there isn't as much pressure to keep this sort of thing on the down low, where in any other countries there is more pressure to keep grey-area stuff like this secret to prevent blowback.
Putting it amongst that cohort and suggesting it's a flower is definitely one reading I guess.
And also it has help, it is unlikely it acts alone. Example Stuxnet. Israel has the talent so they are a convenient and willing proxy too for getting shady shit done.
> has been under the threat of larger enemies from its birth
As everybody else in the planet. Israel is not special in that sense.
Not really. Most countries don't face realistic threat of invasion, especially post world war 2.
Over the last 50 years, the probability of anyone invading france, canada, australia, etc has been next to 0. The only countries that really had to worry are the ones that straddle the regions of influence during the cold war.
This, plus all jewish folks I've ever met are naturally smart (not genetically of course, more like societal pressures/expectations/upbringing), hard working like few others, and seem to genuinely veer towards numerical jobs - banking and finance, math, applied math like security, cryptography, trading and so on. Very similar to Iranians to be fair, if US and British MI6 wouldnt be meddling in Iranian internal politics and supporting corrupt shah to steal all the oil cheaply those 2 would be together a superpower on global scale. Israel was very very lucky to not have any oil on their territories.
Plus very much present in US politics and power circles for some reason.
2 examples out of many - my boss is a prime example, every thought somehow infused with money (I work in a bank). My ex gf was exactly the same (she is a successful commodity trader). Just very, very different mindset to the core to say typical european one (I mention folks who are europeans and I've never been to Israel, so extrapolating a bit here).
The US, to its eternal shame, guarantees their security.
Israel is not particularly skillful: they're a little bully getting in some punches while a big bully holds back the rescuers. Ooh, tough guy!
Cope harder. The US guarantees the security of many nations, including many of the failed states in the Middle East. Look at Saudi Arabia, being completely helpless and begging everyone for help with the Houthis.
That's been the status quo for decades, but between Trump convincing folks that the US won't protect them and Iran convincing folks that the US can't protect them, and Hegseth focusing more on culture war stuff rather than policy objectives it's a guarantee that's looking a bit thin.
Dude, the cover we give Saudi Arabia is also shameful. And when you look at "businesses" like NSO Group, those things are even directly related.
But good on you for recognizing that we have a pattern of this kind of thing, even if you've stopped just short of noticing that it's a problem.
I partially agree: Israel is a little bully who should be extremely worried about the track record of their big bully brother.
Integrated selection pipeline spanning 15 years from age 4 up until age 18.
"threat of larger enemies from its birth"?
Israel is the one occupying and bullying its neighbors and spying on it "allies".
“Threat of larger enemies” yeah that’s the direction the threat goes.
Because Israel is beset on all sides, geographically, digitally and conceptually, by forces hostile to western civilization who want to destroy them at the first opportunity. Being competent at cyber is useful defensively and offensively and the existential nature is highly motivating for the people working at it every day.
> Israel is beset on all sides, geographically, digitally and conceptually, by forces hostile to western civilization who want to destroy them at the first opportunity.
Could you name those forces?
Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Irans regime.
In the past Jordan, Egypt, Syria.
Look at the map. Then read about the Yom Kippur war, Six-Day war, conflicts with Lebanon, and so on.
Israel now is the biggest power in the region, but it was not the case not long ago.
It's wild to me that if you wrote a fictional account of a vassal state that was constructed in the center of "hostile" territory, who exercised brutal violence on all it's neighbors, including strictly for the purpose of territorial acquisition, who was funded and supplied implements of war from it's super-state that vastly exceeded it's own production capabilities, which it used to win every conflict it found itself in, and who's officials regularly make the news for calling for outright genocide, everyone would call them the bad guys. Meanwhile in the real world we just call that Israel, and waive vaguely at "complicated politics."
Or if we are to be historically correct, Israel is a result of nation building as a result of breaking a British empire, just like 35 other countries across Asia, the Carribean and the Middle east.
That includes India, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, UAE, Yemen and others.
Its nation building chud, shoots child in the head you just dont get it slams palestinian grandma into concrete
It's the spy agencies you hear nothing of you should worry about.
"Researchers also recommend that users at high risk of targeting use ad blockers, disable ad tracking, and regularly reset mobile ad IDs.". Not "recommend". Everyone must use uBlock Origin or at least some type of ad blocker in every device.
Then also mandatory pi-hole on every house.
Even if you are used by Windows OS, you must use an adblocker. Even if you use Chrome. On every browser.
Citzen Lab isn't always the most reliable source: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/118492/
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103000
Buried to the fifth page. Ridiculous suppression.
Stories are flagged & voted on by users.
Stories about Israel generally devolve into factional fighting with no useful content.
Users flag & vote accordingly.
This isn't a good answer for why a major cybersecurity story that largely throws the idea of doing business with any Israeli company ever into jeopardy (any company could be a state malware operation in disguise) to the 5th page when it was upvoted as much as it was.
I know HN's algorithm is weird, but this story deserves to stick to the front page for more than the couple of hours the last thread lasted. I don't agree with the algorithm automatically deplatforming controversial topics.
P.S. Most stories on HN that mention Israel in anything remotely related to tech end up with hundreds of comments
On other hand a story Saudi national spying on OpenAI this week got 6 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50078176
A company from countryX does something unkosher -- this means all companies from country X do everything unkosher :)
Good luck operating under these assumptions -- Show me a company that is a leader in tech or business that is not from a country where some companies did unkosher things