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.

Because it's the only country allowed get away with stuff that would be an international scandal if a normal country did it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

You conclude that they’re good at it because they keep getting caught? Fascinating.

> has been under the threat of larger enemies from its birth

As everybody else in the planet. Israel is not special in that sense.

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!

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.

It's the spy agencies you hear nothing of you should worry about.

Yes. Browsing without an adblocker is analogous to driving without a seatbelt. Sure, you can do it - but it's a terribly unsafe idea.

Classic; when you can't kill the message, kill the messenger. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_the_messenger

Buried to the fifth page. Ridiculous suppression.