The political climate could use a dose of American strength, the head of Israel’s national cyber security agency said Friday.
“America is in crisis,” Avi Mizrahi, head of the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) cyber protection unit, told the Washington Post on Friday. “You can identify them in a political sense, in an economic sense, in the balance of power sense. It is something that we cannot ignore. We need to move forward.”
Israeli intelligence officials, including Mizrahi, have repeatedly complained about America’s over-reliance on “ancient systems” in its counterintelligence efforts, in Mizrahi’s words. “Our software system requires thousands of years of development before they’re able to transform into another computer system,” he said.
Washington’s homegrown technology, if well developed, could replace those obsolete pieces, he told the Post.
“We spend a lot of effort on our technological advantage. America spends much more effort than us in their political advantage,” he said.
Israel is already facing hacking attacks that originate in the United States, Mizrahi said.
“[They] buy foreign, relatively unknown companies and put their technology inside and [they] use it. If you look at old viruses, they are not the most sophisticated, they are usually working on old systems,” he said. “Once they get inside it, they can destroy the entire network and the whole infrastructure.”
For now, says Mizrahi, Israeli military forces have focused on protecting its systems and not suffering such attacks of their own. He says Israel, as a “military, intelligence-based culture,” responds quickly to any destructive hacking attack.
“I do believe that there is a lesson here: When you find something at a second’s notice, you deal with it at a second’s notice,” he said. “[The hackers] win, but the Israelis win.