Israel Mobilizes Tech Talent Through Unit 8200
The young alumni of Unit 8200 have made Israel a global player in cybersecurity. The unit is a model for building functional institutions that overcome demographic and geopolitical constraints.
Unit 8200 is the unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responsible for signals intelligence. With 5000 active duty soldiers, it is the largest military intelligence unit in the IDF. It handles open-source intelligence, threat assessment, cryptanalysis, and cyberwarfare. In terms of technical expertise, Unit 8200 has been described by experts as on par with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA),1 which has a budget and personnel that, though classified, is most likely ten times larger than the unit’s. Although unconfirmed, Unit 8200 is widely speculated to be jointly responsible with the NSA for the famous Stuxnet computer malware that crippled one-fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in the 2000s.2 But the unit’s impact goes far beyond state-level cyberwarfare: alumni of Unit 8200 have founded hundreds of cybersecurity companies, including Check Point, CyberArk, and the controversial NSO Group, as well as successful consumer tech startups like Viber and Waze. Israel exported $11 billion in cybersecurity technology in 20213— nearly 10% of the global market4—and as of 2021, the country had more startup “unicorns” per capita than any country in the world.5 A 2018 study of Israeli cybersecurity founders estimated that 80% of those surveyed had experience in IDF intelligence.6
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Unit 8200 was rarely discussed until the 2010s, and soldiers assigned to it were not allowed to reveal where they served. Since receiving publicity in 2009 with the publication of Start-Up Nation, a book tracking Israeli economic successes by journalists Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Unit 8200 has become much more of an open secret. Although military service is mandatory for most Israelis, this particular service track seems correlated to success. The state’s advanced military capabilities are transferred via founders and knowledge transfer to a booming private sector. The publicly-traded Check Point, which created the first commercial firewall in 1993 and today has a $16 billion market capitalization, is Israel’s largest cybersecurity firm and the second-largest Israeli company in any sector by market capitalization.7 In 2021, Israel’s cybersecurity startup ecosystem attracted $8.8 billion in foreign funding and saw eleven startups valued at over $1 billion.8 Israeli cybersecurity firms are often prime targets for acquisition by larger tech companies in Silicon Valley, which integrates the Israeli economy into the larger tech ecosystem.9
Within Unit 8200, unconventional problem-solving and independent thinking are encouraged, and the unit reportedly has a relaxed attitude to the traditional military chain of command. But the prevalence of the unit’s alumni in cybersecurity and information technology has as much to do with Israeli government policy as it does with culture within the unit. On the policy side, the Israeli government has aggressively fostered public-private partnership to sustain innovation within the country. This is part of an overarching strategy of “capacity-building” to maintain an advantage in intelligence, with the added benefit of creating a domestic industry through “dual-use” technologies that have both military and civilian applications.10 Government organizations like the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) and the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) oversee startup incubators and other programs for technological development.
The unit self-selects for talent: it reserves the brightest recruits from the IDF’s mandatory conscription process and uses after-school programs to monitor potential recruits as early as elementary school. Post-duty, mandatory reserve service and alumni associations mean that knowledge cultivated within the unit does not dull when alumni return to civilian life. Moreover, there are incentives for maintaining affiliations and social connections with the unit since it offers a high amount of professional and social capital. Unit alumni often freely advertise their experience on professional social networks like LinkedIn and are highly sought-after as hires. The life-long prestige and self-selected alumni network acquired from brief service as a young adult are not so different from how elite U.S. universities like MIT or Stanford benefit their graduates.
Unit 8200 is a striking example of effective institutional design and of how functional institutions11 can not just overcome but flourish despite wider demographic and geopolitical constraints.12 Though its population of 9.5 million is not tiny, Israel is a small country by global standards that nevertheless manages to compete with far larger powers like the United States, Russia, and China in signals intelligence and cybersecurity. Permitted or clandestine knowledge transfer from the U.S. can partially explain this success on the government side but cannot explain the visible success in the private sector.13 This is also not just a consequence of wealth: Israel’s GDP per capita is on par with far larger countries like Italy and Japan, as well as smaller ones like Slovenia and New Zealand, none of which have comparable capabilities. Even assuming abnormally high human capital, one would not expect a small country’s military cybersecurity capabilities to be this competitive, both due to the high turnover rate caused by conscription and the exceptional necessity to cultivate strong traditions of knowledge for a knowledge-intensive field like cybersecurity. But by funneling alumni into a single domestic industry where the knowledge is actively used, the high turnover becomes a driver rather than a dampener of expertise.
Limited Resources Demand Creative Institutional Design
Unit 8200 has a long history and, in its early form, it actually predated Israel’s existence. Its origins can be traced to the 1930s British Mandate of Palestine, where it was established as Shin Mem 2, a signals intelligence (SIGINT) division of the Haganah Zionist paramilitary organization. Haganah’s primary purpose was to defend Jewish settlements against attacks by Palestinian Arabs, and to this end, Shin Mem 2 would bug phone lines to obtain advance information about potential attacks. During this period, Shin Mem 2 was under the leadership of Mordechai Almog, a Russian-Jewish émigré to Palestine, who, like many Eastern European settlers, came fleeing pogroms. Almog had the opportunity to create an intelligence unit from scratch, even before the state that would later use it existed.
Almog received SIGINT training from the British police in Palestine on behalf of the Jewish Agency and worked as a police officer before joining Haganah. Almog is considered Unit 8200’s founder and is credited with expanding Shin Mem 2 and proving its efficacy in military operations. He purportedly did this by manning the unit even after it was directed to disband during the Israeli War of Independence and by providing information on Jordanian troop movements to the head of Haganah intelligence, Isser Harel, who would later go on to direct Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency.14 Fellow Haganah members Yomi Eini and Arieh Surkis are sometimes credited as co-founders, though it is difficult to ascertain whether they were instrumental in leading the unit itself or whether they were simply early recruits.
When the State of Israel was officially established in 1948, Shin Mem 2 was renamed Unit 515 and incorporated into the IDF as an electronic warfare unit under Aman, the IDF’s military intelligence wing. Unit 515 broadened its scope to cryptography, cryptanalysis, and SIGINT. The unit remained small, with limited staff and equipment purchased from U.S. military surplus. However, in 1950 Almog convinced Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to expand its budget to $125,000 annually (about $1.5 million in 2022 U.S. dollars) and approve additional staffing transfers.15 Still, the shoestring nature of the unit’s operations meant it largely created its own hardware and software internally and developed proprietary usages to stretch its funds.16 This is an early indicator of Unit 8200’s culture, in which members are encouraged to tackle problems unconventionally.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and the founder of the Israeli state, bears further mention as his military strategy ultimately guided Unit 8200 into its current form. Ben-Gurion founded a state with a small population and a fledgling economy, embattled on all sides and geopolitically insecure. His concept for Israeli security persists today and emphasizes preparedness for inescapable conflict. Given that Israel is a small country, the defensive plan’s key features are deterrence, intelligence, and early warning systems to counterbalance its relative lack of manpower and territory.17
However, early attempts to integrate Unit 515 into this strategy were less than successful. The unit participated in the 1956 Arab-Israeli War, where its name was changed again to Unit 848. Still, it took until the 1967 Six-Day War for the unit to be allocated sufficient funding to improve its information-collecting capabilities to better monitor Syria and Egypt. With these funds, it was able to develop an internal computing department, which was in charge of deciphering Egyptian and Syrian communications. It also constructed listening posts in strategic areas such as the Golan Heights along the Syrian border and in the Sinai Desert.18
Counterintuitively, this wellspring of resources is often credited with reducing the unit’s efficacy, leading to overconfidence and complacency. For example, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Unit 848 failed to alert the IDF more than a few hours before an impending invasion, even though the unit had adequate intelligence days prior. The unit was operating on a widely-held assumption in the Israeli intelligence community that Egypt and Syria were unprepared for a full-scale war and would not initiate if they were not certain they could win. This led to misinterpretations of otherwise clear indicators of an offensive.19 In addition, a Unit 848 intelligence officer was captured by Syria, resulting in information leaks. The resulting 1975 governmental inquiry resulted in a complete overhaul of the unit. This involved changing its name to Unit 8200 and restructuring it, so its internal departments were almost completely independent of each other. The overhaul also determined the current culture of the unit; while a certain amount of authority-questioning had been previously allowed, it was now actively encouraged to resist established dogma. The new Unit 8200 was positioned at the center of the IDF’s early warning systems and was given the privilege of picking the best IDF recruits for itself.
Israel Uses Conscription to Gather Top Talent
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Israel has mandatory military conscription, with residents serving two-year terms in the IDF immediately after high school. Unit 8200 is allowed to use IDF draft screenings to skim potential recruits based on aptitude testing. Unit 8200 also has a longer recruitment pipeline in the form of Magshimim. This exclusive high school program provides a three-year intensive training course in software engineering and cybersecurity to around 500 students per cycle, selected from an applicant pool of around 2000. Gvahim, a robotics and computing program for fourth-grade students, can serve as an additional pipeline. Both programs are overseen jointly by the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Rashi Foundation, a private philanthropic group with historical roots in Zionist organizing.20 Magshimim, in particular, can be viewed as a primer in the unconventional thinking fostered by Unit 8200. Students are expected to pass an online application that focuses not on answering questions from memory but instead tests applicants on information-gathering and logic problems. Should applicants pass this and their draft day aptitude testing, additional interviews are carried out by Unit 8200 soldiers, allowing the unit to select its replacements as members age out.21
Mandatory conscription means the turnover rate within the unit is high—the average length of service is four years, which means the unit loses around 25% of its members annually. For an elite military unit, this is a very high turnover rate, but for a talent incubator, it is no different from the turnover of undergraduates at a university. Unit members expect not to see projects through to deployment, which means the unit fosters a design sensibility in which legibility is as important as innovation. Alumni report that research and development within the unit are almost entirely self-directed, with soldiers provided only with objectives toward which they can apply any means available. There is also very little hierarchy; the unit is broken into a series of parallel departments working independently of each other. Within the departments, it is expected that soldiers will be able to communicate with their superiors informally so long as it leads to better results. For projects of particular importance, the unit can also be leveraged as a startup incubator. A project lead can stay in the unit past their typical end of service, and the unit will provide manpower to complete the project.22
When soldiers leave the IDF, they are expected to undergo yearly refresher training and serve in the IDF reserves for up to three weeks per year until they reach their 40s. For Unit 8200, this means alumni can check on ongoing projects and interact with new generations of recruits. Affiliation with the unit serves as an informal alumni network and one that is extremely cohesive; it is widely accepted that any Unit 8200 alumnus can reach out to another, even if they never interacted during their service, and expect to be heard out.23 An official Unit 8200 alumni association with approximately 15,000 members serves a similar networking function. Continued contact between alumni naturally leads to clusters of them in business; it is a highly efficient means of hiring and recruitment, similar to the social networking utility of Ivy League universities.24 For any company started by unit alumni, talent can be found pre-vetted in other unit members.
The university system further incentivizes the unit’s integration with domestic industry. Israel has seven public research universities, the most famous being the Technion in Haifa. Much of Israel’s basic R&D for defense is carried out by its university system.25 In addition, each Israeli university owns a technology transfer company that patents and commercializes innovations achieved by its students and staff.26 Cyber research is actively incentivized: Tel Aviv University, for example, hosts a cooperative cyber research venture jointly with the government, and the Jerusalem College of Technology collaborated with the INCD to create an intensive cyber training program. Innovation in cybersecurity fostered by institutions keeps Israel’s export-dependent economy on stable ground.
The State Knows How to Launch Private Sector Winners
The dynamism of Unit 8200 does not entirely account for Israel’s outsized presence in the cybersecurity and information technology industries. The state has fostered this national specialty to reduce reliance on imports and create economic specialization. To that end, Israeli policy has effectively guided and supported the industry. After the 1967 Six-Day war, Israel began creating state-owned enterprises specifically for meeting its new demands for military equipment, then began privatizing them in the 1990s to meet still-growing demand. Starting in 1989, over one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union came to Israel, a total figure equivalent to about 25% of Israel’s population in 1990. Over half of these immigrants from the former Soviet Union had post-secondary education and, moreover, reportedly 108,000 of them were engineers by profession, equivalent to nearly 2.5% of Israel’s 1990 population.27 Russian speakers today make up 15% of Israel’s population.28 Israel saw an influx of high-tech talent and averaged 23% annual growth over the decade in its information technology industry.29 Half of the government’s ten largest firms were in private hands by 2006, and privatization has become a government policy directive.30 If Israel’s success in cybersecurity and information technology ultimately stems from the military, it has been further scaled up by considerable state support in the private sector.31
While the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI) directs Israel’s broader economic strategy, the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA), founded in 1965 as the Office of Chief Scientist, has spearheaded initiatives to develop new markets, including cybersecurity. Responsible for the government’s specialized R&D investment and for its innovation policy, the IIA acts as a strategic investor, disbursing approximately $1 billion annually. It subsidizes R&D of use to the state at a rate of 50% and, in the case of successful projects, receives royalties from the companies involved.32 Yigal Erlich, head of the IIA, then launched the Yozma Program in 1993, which provided tax incentives to foreign venture investments. It even promised to match any investment with government funds through a $100 million state-run venture capital firm that partnered with American, Japanese, and German firms.
By 1998, Yozma funds had raised $263 million. Between the knowledge transfer from foreign venture capital firms, legitimacy from Intel, IBM, and Cisco’s limited partnerships with Israeli venture capital firms, and the high Yozma exit rate of 56%—aided by the timely emergence of the NASDAQ stock exchange as an accessible exit strategy—the venture capital industry became extremely attractive. Yozma began privatization in 1998, and by 2001, Israel was home to over one hundred venture capital firms, up from two in 1991. Rapid growth enabled economies of scale. Marketing, legal, and accounting industries developed to meet demand, providing support for startup founders staying in Israel.33 Today, Erlich remains the managing partner of the main branch of Yozma, which has spun off dozens of venture firms since 1998.
Beyond the IIA, the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), founded in 2011, coordinates national cybersecurity and cyberwarfare capacity for the Prime Minister’s Office. The 2015 National Cyber Security Strategy organized by the INCD emphasizes the domestic ecosystem as a public-private network of institutions, including academia, private industry, and the military. It prioritizes the development of dual-use technology and emphasizes R&D grantmaking for private companies along the lines of DARPA in the U.S.34 In 2011, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office issued Resolution 3611, which established guidelines for public-private partnership and led to several platforms for cooperation. A key example is CyberSpark, an office park and research center attached to Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. It includes Deutsche Telekom, IBM, Oracle, and Lockheed Martin as tenants and is expected to house Unit 8200 research facilities as well. Though CyberSpark is not an official defense contract, close proximity between industry players encourages collaboration and knowledge exchange. Also coordinated by the INCD is an anonymous information exchange platform that lets the IDF cooperate with the private sector.35
A key factor here is flexibility: the relatively lean Israeli bureaucracy can account for highly specific fluctuations in both the economy and defensive postures. In the early 1990s, the IIA created six technological incubator programs for the thousands of scientists and engineers who had immigrated from the former Soviet Union. In addition, Israeli R&D is often focused on specific threat assessment instead of operating from a generalized security strategy. Israel’s drive for cyber expertise has pivoted around a potential confrontation with Iran. Resolution B/84, centering on critical cyber infrastructure protection, was passed, and the National Information Security Authority was formed in December 2002, the year evidence of Iran’s nuclear program emerged.36 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who served from 1996–99 and again between 2009–21, consistently held a similar posture towards Iran, and it was under his tenure that cybersecurity became a security priority.37
The Challenge of Scaling Up Initial Success
By most accounts, Israel’s tech industry is highly successful, especially in cybersecurity. In 2021, technology accounted for 54% of Israel’s total exports.38 But there are signs that the current industry trajectory may be unsustainable. Israeli R&D spending as a percentage of GDP is 5% as of 2022, the highest in the world, but the proportion of that funding provided by the government is quite low: 9.6% as of 2019.39 For comparison, the U.S. government’s proportion of R&D spending was 20%.40 Similarly, the $1 billion in subsidies distributed by the IIA is an unusually low figure considering the scale of Israeli industry. It is a sign that the government may have overprioritized privatization in the interest of growing domestic tech industries quickly or failed to scale up its investments as the economy grew. This makes Israel sensitive to changes in global investment priorities, essentially giving the global venture capital industry a say in whether and how quickly a key Israeli industry will meet its objectives. In theory, outsourcing R&D to the private sector allows for increased flexibility, but it could also be a vulnerability in the event of market downturns. This could pose issues given that Israeli exports are overwhelmingly concentrated in technological development. Its domestic venture capital industry is staked to its successes in technology, as are its defense exports. Other domestic industries like agriculture, energy, and mining lack the scale to compete with other countries.
There are also signs that Israel’s tech sector may be hitting the upper limit of its growth. Over 10% of the Israeli workforce is employed in “high-tech” industries, including software, telecommunications, and industrial technologies.41 But the State Comptroller has reported that Israeli tech companies have a combined 18,500 chronic vacancies, hinting at a shortage of qualified workers.42 Israeli tech hires, like those in the U.S., tend to skew urban and male.43 The growth of the Israeli tech industry means that openings now outstrip applicants. For reference, Unit 8200 releases about 1250 personnel annually, not nearly enough to fill vacancies consistently. The state is expected to trial expedited visa programs to attract foreign workers. It also has a slew of training programs for minority populations to ramp up domestic recruitment.
The state’s large proportion of Orthodox Jewish (12%) and Arab (21%) populations are underrepresented in tech, as are women. Education and recruitment efforts for ethnic and religious minorities, women, and rural populations have been widespread. For example, Magshimim specifically targets applicants in rural municipalities—but when it comes to populations like the Orthodox that have social taboos concerning technology, there is likely to be only modest traction. In 2012, 0.7% of the tech workforce was Orthodox. That number is approximately 3% as of 2021 with the aid of training programs.44 Given how long some of these programs have been in operation, it is unlikely they will provide significant gains going forward. Moreover, in response to economic crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, employment numbers for certain groups, like women, declined despite diversity efforts.45
Unit 8200 will likely continue to be the vanguard of the Israeli tech industry. But a small group of uniquely effective hires will be unable to carry the industry to new heights, despite the high proportion of tech founders it produces. To that end, efforts to diversify both the tech industry and Israel’s exports will likely take center stage in years to come. An expansion of Unit 8200 is also possible but would probably just water down the exclusivity that powers the institution and the unit’s military mission. Israel’s premier cybersecurity and tech companies are already highly internationalized: Check Point has dual U.S. and Israeli headquarters, while CyberArk is headquartered in the United States with offices in Israel. Both companies trade on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in New York City. On the consumer side, Viber and Waze were both acquired by foreign companies, namely by Japanese conglomerate Rakuten and by Google respectively. This is partially a predictable consequence of competing in the global tech industry but is also probably a sign of the difficulty or even impossibility of scaling up startups into large corporations entirely in Israel without ultimately relying on foreign hires, offices, or funding. This means that Israel probably captures most of the value of the technical expertise it inculcates but not most of the economic value. Israel is then subsidizing the quality of global cybersecurity and information technology through Unit 8200, an outcome that can be expected of a truly functional institution.46
In Israel, the solution of bringing in foreign workers seems both natural and viable, though it is unclear what incentives would be necessary to attract enough foreign talent. As it has always done, the Israeli government already heavily promotes the immigration of foreign Jews to Israel and provides financial assistance to those who decide to do so. Competing with Silicon Valley for top global talent, Jewish or not, would be expensive and likely not a viable strategy in the long term. Through Unit 8200, Israel has likely fully mobilized all of the human capital that it can towards building its cybersecurity industry and capabilities. The industry’s success so far represents a notable victory of institutional design over the inherent limits of Israel’s small population and market, but further scaling is running into the same limits again and would require yet further institutional innovation. It might make sense, for example, to reverse the encouragement of founding new startups and instead funnel talent into a single state-backed cybersecurity or software corporation. This would be similar to how many countries such as France or Sweden already have “national champions” in key industries. With the right live player at the helm, this may be able to solve the industry’s scaling problem without damaging the talent pipeline of Unit 8200.
John Reed, “Unit 8200: Israel’s cyber spy agency,” Financial Times, July 10, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/69f150da-25b8-11e5-bd83-71cb60e8f08c
David Kushner, “The Real Story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, February 26, 2013, https://courses.cs.duke.edu/spring20/compsci342/netid/readings/cyber/stuxnet-ieee-spectrum.pdf.
Ricky Ben-David, “Israeli cybersecurity firms raised record $8.8b in 2021, exports reached $11b,” The Times of Israel, January 20, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-cybersecurity-firms-raised-record-8-8b-in-2021-exports-reached-11b.
According to Fortune Business Insights. See here: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/cyber-security-market-101165
A “unicorn” is a privately-held company valued at over $1 billion. See statistics for 2021 here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096928/number-of-global-unicorns-by-country/
Hagar Shezaf and Jonathan Jacobson, “Revealed: Israel's Cyber-spy Industry Helps World Dictators Hunt Dissidents and Gays,” Haaretz, October 20, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-10-20/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israels-cyber-spy-industry-aids-dictators-hunt-dissidents-and-gays/0000017f-e9a9-dc91-a17f-fdadde240000.
Ricky Ben-David, “Israeli cybersecurity firms raised record $8.8b in 2021, exports reached $11b,” The Times of Israel, January 20, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-cybersecurity-firms-raised-record-8-8b-in-2021-exports-reached-11b.
Orr Hirschauge, “Overseas Buyers Snap Up Two More Israeli Cyber Security Firms,” Haaretz, March 19, 2014, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/2014-03-19/ty-article/.premium/2-more-israeli-cyber-security-firms-sold-overseas/0000017f-e983-d62c-a1ff-fdfb6c450000.
Dmitry Adamsky, “The Israeli Odyssey toward its National Cyber Security Strategy,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2, June 14, 2017, pp. 113-127, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317597467_The_Israeli_Odyssey_toward_its_National_Cyber_Security_Strategy.
Samo Burja, “Functional Institutions are the Exception,” SamoBurja.com, July 9, 2018, https://samoburja.com/functional-institutions-are-the-exception/
Samo Burja, “Heal Thyself,” City Journal, August 26, 2020, https://www.city-journal.org/healthy-institutions-are-made-not-born
James Bamford, “Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA,” Wired, April 3, 2012, https://www.wired.com/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/
Amir Kidon, “Unit 8200: In the Beginning,” Israel Defense Forces, September 1, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20090206103120/http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/2008n/09/0101.htm.
Sean Cordey, “Trend analysis: The Israeli Unit 8200 – An OSINT-based study,” Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, December 2019, https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/Cyber-Reports-2019-12-Unit-8200.pdf.
Ibid.
Lior Tabansky and Isaac Ben Israel, “Cybersecurity in Israel,” SpringerBriefs, 2015, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-18986-4.
Sean Cordey, “Trend analysis: The Israeli Unit 8200 – An OSINT-based study,” Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, December 2019, https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/Cyber-Reports-2019-12-Unit-8200.pdf.
Dror Michman and Yael Mizrahi-Arnaud, “The fog of certainty: Learning from the intelligence failures of the 1973 war,” Brookings, October 23, 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/10/23/the-fog-of-certainty-learning-from-the-intelligence-failures-of-the-1973-war.
Abigail Klein Leichman, “The surprising source of tomorrow’s cyber experts,” Israel21c, May 6, 2015, https://www.israel21c.org/the-surprising-source-of-tomorrows-cyber-experts.
Sean Cordey, “Trend analysis: The Israeli Unit 8200 – An OSINT-based study,” Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, December 2019, https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/Cyber-Reports-2019-12-Unit-8200.pdf.
Richard Behar, “Inside Israel's Secret Startup Machine,” Forbes, May 11, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2016/05/11/inside-israels-secret-startup-machine/?sh=104e3d181a51.
Amos Barshad, “Inside Israel’s lucrative — and secretive —cybersurveillance industry,” Rest of World, March 9, 2021, https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-israels-lucrative-and-secretive-cybersurveillance-talent-pipeline.
Jane Desmond, “Ivy Halls and Ivy Walls: The Continuing Legacy of the Ivy League,” University of Illinois, November 13, 2009, https://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/88674/1/9.%20Articles%20%20Ivy%20Halls%20and%20Ivy%20Walls%20%20The%20Continuing%20Legacy%20of%20the%20Ivy%20League.pdf.
Lior Tabansky and Isaac Ben Israel, “Cybersecurity in Israel,” SpringerBriefs, 2015, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-18986-4.
Lior Tabansky, “Towards a Theory of Cyber Power: The Israeli Experience with Innovation and Strategy,” Tel Aviv University, 2016, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7529426.
Judy Maltz, “One, two, three, four – we opened up the Iron Door,” Haaretz, accessed September 12, 2022, https://www.haaretz.com/st/c/prod/eng/25yrs_russ_img/; Haviv Rettig Gur and Herb Keinon, “Netanyahu: 20 years after Iron Curtain collapsed, it's clear Russian-speaking aliya 'rescued the State of Israel'”, The Jerusalem Post, September 7, 2009, https://www.jpost.com/israel/netanyahu-20-years-after-iron-curtain-collapsed-its-clear-russian-speaking-aliya-rescued-the-state-of-israel-154040
Izabella Tabarovsky, “Russian-Speaking Israelis Go to the Polls,” Wilson Center, April 4, 2019, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/russian-speaking-israelis-go-to-the-polls
George Gilder, “Silicon Israel: How market capitalism saved the Jewish state,” City Journal, 2009, https://www.city-journal.org/html/silicon-israel-13208.html
Hever, Privatization of Israeli Cybersecurity, 2018, xii.
Errez Magor, “Scale-Up Nation: The Role of IP-Transfer Restrictions in Israel’s Industrial Policy,” American Affairs, November 2021, https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/11/scale-up-nation-the-role-of-ip-transfer-restrictions-in-israels-industrial-policy/
Gil Avnimelech, “VC Policy: Yozma Program 15-Years Perspective,” January 2009, ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228921726_VC_Policy_Yozma_Program_15-Years_perspective
Ibid.
Dmitry Adamsky, “The Israeli Odyssey toward its National Cyber Security Strategy,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2, June 14, 2017, pp. 113-127, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317597467_The_Israeli_Odyssey_toward_its_National_Cyber_Security_Strategy.
Hudi Zack, “The Pillars of State-Level Cyber Defense,” Tel Aviv University, June 19, 2018, https://video.tau.ac.il/events/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=8912:the-pillars-of-state&Itemid=559.
Lior Tabansky, “Towards a theory of cyber power: The Israeli experience with innovation and strategy,” IEEE, May 31, 2016, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7529426.
Barak Ravid, “Iraq 2002, Iran 2012: Compare and Contrast Netanyahu's Speeches,” October 4, 2012, https://www.haaretz.com/2012-10-04/ty-article/bibi-and-the-bomb-the-sequel/0000017f-f7ed-d044-adff-f7fd8f970000.
“Annual Innovation Report – State of High-Tech 2022," Israel Innovation Authority, May 2022, https://innovationisrael.org.il/en/sites/default/files/2022-05/Annual%20Innovation%20Report%20-%20State%20of%20High-Tech%202022.pdf.
Hideki Uno and Benjamin Glanz, “Sustaining Israel's Innovation Economy,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 23, 2022, https://www.csis.org/blogs/perspectives-innovation/sustaining-israels-innovation-economy.
“Annual Innovation Report – State of High-Tech 2022," Israel Innovation Authority, May 2022, https://innovationisrael.org.il/en/sites/default/files/2022-05/Annual%20Innovation%20Report%20-%20State%20of%20High-Tech%202022.pdf.
Orlee Gutman, “Israel needs a new model of 'academia plus',” Israel Hayom, March 16, 2022, https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/03/16/israel-needs-a-new-model-of-academia-plus.
“Diversity in High Tech,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, https://www.eeoc.gov/special-report/diversity-high-tech.
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