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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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

> 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.

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.

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.

Given the number of enemies Israel has, it has to be prudent and explore every opportunity it has. One strategic mistake could be fatal.

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.

Integrated selection pipeline spanning 15 years from age 4 up until age 18.

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

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.

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“Threat of larger enemies” yeah that’s the direction the threat goes.

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).

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

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

"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.

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!

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