Comment by ferguess_k
4 days ago
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.
Just curious which city is the best city for computer system programming?
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The Hollywood case has a quirk that is relevent to the extensional content of HN:
West coast filmmakng started in the Bay Area (at the time the largest conurbation in the west) but moved south because of the year 'round weather.
But why the west? Because Edison controlled the filmmaking patents and demanded not just royalties but script oversight as well. By moving west, they could ignore the patents because they were simply too hard to enforce from such a long distance.
So ironically, given how things worked out, IP piracy is at the root of Hollywood.
Yep, but Edison is long gone, while Hollywood kept compounding over time. There's zero other reasons Hollywood is _currently_ better than any other place for filmmaking.
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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".
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
> why is Israel so good at this?
Unit 8200 [1]. Also, Israel doesn't extradite its own citizens and seems to turn a blind eye to criminals doing nonsense abroad. (Similar to Russia and China.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
That unit is a symptom of their prodigious skill not the cause. Israelis are good at cyber for the same reason the US is good, and the same reason Russia is good. They have an outsized tech industry.
> That unit is a symptom of their prodigious skill not the cause
"Unit 8200 was established in 1952," and apparently the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology was founded in 1912 [2]. I don't think Israel became a tech centre until the 1980s or 90s.
I'm not an expert on this. But similar to how military spending created Silicon Valley, I think Israeli military structure created its tech industry.
[1] Wikipedia
[2] https://ats.org/explore/videos/1912-today-the-institution-th...
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.
> Ashkenazi and general Jewish culture values education more than anyone
I would recommend you to visit Israel and traditional orthodox jews. Women are serving as "birthing machines", constantly pregnant, and doing all house chores. Education for women is strongly discouraged. Men are "studying", but useless memorizing of old texts.
Normal education in western sense is strongly discouraged in traditional jewish culture!
Two things can be true at the same, although I agree with your assessment of future prospects - and the recent OECD report on school performance could be read that way too (or blamed on the war as the government has).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-plummets-to-worst-ever-...
Israel is not just one homogeneous people, there are some orthodox jews who study biblical texts, treat women as birthing machines, and (personal opinion) contribute little to our society.
Yes, orthodox jews are a significant part of the population (~1.4 million in 2025 [1]), and I wouldn't go there looking for modern ideas like women's rights, but go a couple km in any direction and you'd find completely different people, living modern lives just like in the rest of the western world. Schools, research universities (Tel Aviv University, Waitzmann Institue of Science, Technion), tech companies, startups, makerspaces, and many more.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi_Judaism
That is only one part of Israeli society.
Traditional Judaism has this really weird (to me, a goy) emphasis on finding loopholes in rules. I always remember these ropes they place around New York City and other places so they can stay "indoors" on, I think it was, the Shabbat, by walking underneath the rope, which is a type of ceiling.
As I understand it, they know God's not stupid and sees right through this sort of thing, but they believe God put rules like "stay indoors on the Shabbat" in place so that He could entertain Himself by watching the creative loopholes humans come up with. Other Shabbat loopholes include putting things on timers the day before, paying a non-Jew to do things that Jews are forbidden to do, or legally transferring ownership of the cupboard full of bread to a non-Jew for the one day a year when Jews aren't allowed to own bread.
And as I understand it, they do this with all things, from a young age. Cultivating this mindset definitely has something to do with their cybersecurity prowess.
> Traditional Judaism has this really weird (to me, a goy) emphasis on finding loopholes in rules.
As an atheist Jew, it's weird to me as well...
> stay "indoors" on, I think it was, the Shabbat
Can't say I'm familiar with that one. What I'm generally familiar with is that you're not allowed to "work" on Shabbat, and the definition of work is extremely broad. For example, lighting a fire is considered work, turning a light switch on creates a tiny spark between the contacts, that counts as fire, so it's work.
This extends to pretty much every electrical device, so for those who observe Shabbat, using a computer or phone, turning the AC on or off, is all disallowed.
As a result there are many workarounds as you've described, timers, non-Jews (though you can't ask directly! You can say "it's hot in here", but not "Please turn the AC on"), fridges without a light bulb inside, and more.
> they do this with all things, from a young age.
Religious families do, to varying degrees. But I've met plenty of extremely talented programmers and hackers who do not follow any of the Jewish law.
Edit: Just noticed your username, I also want to say I really like your projects on YouTube!
'It's due to the shiftiness of jews'. Nice discussion Dang.
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."
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> 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.
Israel is definitely a threat to its enemies, but even if you think it's all their fault and they deserve it (I do not think that), it's pretty obvious that Israel also faces many threats.
The idea of Israel being under threat has been inculcated into every Israeli and Zionist. Significant casualties of historical facts had to occur such as The first arab israel war is described as arab world fighting Israel, Even though Israel conquered significant parts of UN partitioned Palestine. The arab govts were too new to be a threat. And they were too disunited then and now. Since inception, Israel has been behind every attack and disruption to peace.
Perhaps you don’t know the history or simply choose to ignore it. Initiating bombing, ethnic cleansing, stealing land, property and occupation of people for eight decades, while publicly declaring a desire to invade all the regional nations to create a greater Israel apartheid regime does generate pushback. Imagine that.
See professor john mearsheimer on the history & future of israel
https://www.youtube.com/live/z8wooQEYyzc?si=_STtJSdEjDUwIl72
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Because they are arrogant as fuck, barge their way in, shove everyone else out of the way and genuinely believe they are gods chosen people. Are you surprised that a country that regularly spits on Christians and turns cities into concentration camps while running the world's biggest pedo blackmail ring, "right to return for pedos" offer, exploding pagers and spyware operations - happens to be the best?
Because Apple, Intel and Samsung have huge engineering labs there and employ IDF & intelligence people to work in those corporation’s labs. It means they have very detailed knowledge of their products as they have all internal documents and also design software & hardware.
That is why both Apple & Samsung have malware from Israel on their phones. The USA has the NSA building and exploiting products for surveillance and penetration globally.
Netanyahu recently was on a US broadcast, he held up a phone and stated to the reporter interviewing him, that Israel can penetrate any device obtaining it contents and then blackmail or discredit the owner of said device.
The USA now examines phones at airports to see if people are saying things the current administration doesn’t like.
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.
A few potential possibilities that may or may not be popular here.
- Compulsory military service means the government captures the best and brightest of the country.
- An extraordinarily outsized number of nobel prizes belong to Ashkenazi Jews, and other indicators of intelligence (lack of propensity for violent crime, lifetime earnings, etc) are also quite high for the whole group.
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They aren’t the best because they are identified so often. They are the most brazen and reckless.
The wig fallacy is in full effect here.
Look to the Netherlands, UK, Scandinavia and others for governments who aren’t getting caught doing this.
We have had viruses leaked by other countries in the past, with US and Germany coming to mind. If I remember right it was around 2005-2010 when democratic nations officially started to state that they had a right to use malware against criminals and military targets, and from that on it has just kept going. As I recall, Bruce Schneier and FSF made a bit of articles and talks where they tried to get people to understand that once democratic nations starts to use malware offensively they also generally stop protecting their citizens from those security holes.
That we don't hear about it more often seems to me that nations that develop this stuff seem to have gotten better in making malware more precise in what they target and less leaky to the general population, but it could also be that media just don't report about it as much. When a gangs anonymous chat get hacked, or a tor hidden service website get taken down, news seems more interested in talking about the crime than what security vulnerability that the police used.
> My question is, why is Israel so good at this?
American money, tech and intel, plus they are vastly overstaffed for the size of territory they want to defend.
Country that prizes education and is constantly under threat. Plus, most folks do serious time in the army and only after that do they go to college.
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.
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.
Integrated selection pipeline spanning 15 years from age 4 up until age 18.
Given the number of enemies Israel has, it has to be prudent and explore every opportunity it has. One strategic mistake could be fatal.
For the same reason Russia is so good at producing mobsters - the government turns a blind eye or even acts as an incubator for scammers. Your question is like asking why the Philippines is so good at sex tourism.
You conclude that they’re good at it because they keep getting caught? Fascinating.
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.
I partially agree: Israel is a little bully who should be extremely worried about the track record of their big bully brother.
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.
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.
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>Israel is not particularly skillful
"The people I don't like are always unskilled." You shouldn't hate your enemies; it affects your judgement.
> 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.
But that's mostly true because those countries are rich and fly half the world away to attack poorer countries and usually by bombing them from far away. Eg syrians can't realistically gather enough money and weapons and planes and bombs to bomb paris. Or iraqis london. Etc. On the other hand, they can gather a few fanatics, give them guns and have them shoot a bunch of people, or bomb something, or worse. But then we get the "why did those people get radicalized? was it GTA?" articles.
TBH, considering the number of dead in palestine and the number of people in europe/us who literally lost everyone who ever mattered to them, the number of "terrorist" attacks seems relatively low.
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> Over the last 50 years, the probability of anyone invading france
Wat.
Sure, maybe if NATO stopped the USSR in the Fulda Gap. But you know that the USSR's war plans definitely involved invading France, right?
And don't make the mistake of judging probability with the benefit of hindsight, that'd be a terrible intellectual tarpit to fall into.
> the probability of anyone invading france, canada, australia, etc has been next to 0.
Good for them. They learned to cooperate with their neighbors, created alliances and friends, and restrained to kill other people.
If you have one enemy, the enemy is the problem
If everybody else is your enemy, YOU are the problem.
Check your behavior and see if you can improve as human being.
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Fewer internal barriers.
“Threat of larger enemies” yeah that’s the direction the threat goes.
They get away with genocide, it's no wonder that they can get away with this.
Because it's the only country allowed get away with stuff that would be an international scandal if a normal country did it.
> an international scandal if a normal country did it
Russia, China and America each have notable offensive cyberwarfare capabilities. (Pyongyang is a nuclear-armed cybercrime ring at this point.)
You just listed some of the most sanctioned countries in the world #1 and #3.
China doesn't have large sanctions because it plays a key role in the economy, but the US had massive regime change intelligence operations against them in the 90s, but they failed and were dismantled.
Just like frontier models get away with things no humans would.
More specifically, it can steal military and tech secrets from the USA and keep getting invited back. Total impunity.
And also injure and kill our sailors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
In that one incident, they killed and injured more than double the number killed and injured by Al Qaeda in the attack on the USS Cole.
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Did we forget about Snowden?
Everyone knows Snowden so I guess it was quite big scandal
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And Gitmo, lies leading to invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, all of the times we whoopsies a JDAM into a school or wedding…
But yeah the country under an eternal international microscope is the one “getting away with it.”
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All normal countries spy on their enemies and all normal countries spy on their friends. All normal countries use cyber-espionage. All normal political groups condemn the actions of groups they oppose and excuse the same actions when committed by those they support.
1. For all normal countries, if they get caught, there's consequences. For Israel there's no consequences even if they get caught.
2. Israel is embedded in US politics. So US government is allowed to purchase this from Israeli contractors but I doubt they would be allowed to purchase sensitive stuff like from a neutral country like UAE.
So, the US is the customer and also protects Israel so Israel has built an entire industry around it.
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> 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.
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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.
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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
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that's just "God's chosen people!" with extra words
No it's science: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial... . Unless you believe God forced the Europeans to persecute the Ashkenazi Jews in order to create selection pressure for intelligence.
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No, why? Apart from the not very plausible explanation with selection pressures in the middle ages, Jewish intelligence is pretty obvious if you look at the data- just as obvious as it's Jewish economic and media power, Jewish influence in Western politics, Jewish contributions to arts and literature, and so on. It really couldn't be more obvious. I think we need to recognise it and find ways to deal with it, from both sides.
I’m going to save this joke for parties. Damn you a funny guy.
The grand parent is not wrong -- 22 to 25% of individual nobel prize winners in 20th and 21st century were of Jewish descent.
Although laureats of Asian descent have been on the sharpest upward trajector in the recent decades
Sources:
https://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_Nobel_laureates
Here's a study backing it up: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial... (the lead author is from Tel Aviv University so hardly some antisemitic crackpot).
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"threat of larger enemies from its birth"?
Israel is the one occupying and bullying its neighbors, spying on its "allies", doing air-strikes on neutral countries, attacking US research ships, and performing piracy and kidnapping in international waters.
It's the spy agencies you hear nothing of you should worry about.
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).