Iran and Israel: Already at War in Cyberspace?
Seth J. Frantzman
The National Interest, May 22, 2020An Iranian cyber-attack on Israeli water infrastructure provoked a response from Jerusalem in May. Pro-Iranian groups then hacked Israeli websites on May 20 in a second round of attacks that appears to show the cyber battlefield in the Middle East is heating up. The Iranian attack was sophisticated while Israel’s response, according to U.S. officials, disrupted computer systems that run Iran’s Shahid Rajaee Port, a key economic facility for Tehran. The cyber battles come amid rising tensions, a recent trip by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Israel, and a recent joint exercise by U.S. and Israeli F-35s in March.The initial attack began on April 24 when Israel’s Water Authority came under attack. Six facilities were affected ad in one there was irregularity related to the unplanned change in data. A pump at one station went into “continuous operation.” Israel says that there was no effect on the water supply and Israel disconnected its systems, changed passwords, and was able to recover from the assault. But the nature of the attack reveals things could be much worse.There has been growing concern about Iran’s cyber warfare abilities. The United States analyzed potential cyber blowback from the killing of IRGC Quds Force Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in January. The United States has been keen to increase cyber defenses against Russia and China over the last decades. Iran is also a key threat and it has used cyber-attacks against Saudi Arabia, harming some thirty thousand computers in 2012. Washington increased cybersecurity to deal with these threats and the U.S. military has not only broadened defenses but also carried out a cyberattack on Iran in the wake of the downing of a U.S. drone in June 2019.Israel and the United States have cooperated against Iran using cyberwarfare. According to reports, the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear program was a result of close U.S.-Israeli cooperation. The computer worm sabotaged centrifuges. Iran appears to want to show it can now do the same to Israeli infrastructure. Israel has known the risks for a decade and invested heavily in cyber defense and the creation of a cyber unit in the Israeli Defense Forces in 2011.The result is that for most of the last decade no serious Iranian cyber-attacks have been reported. That changed in April 2020 and it came amid rising tensions, the coronavirus crisis, and Iran’s increasing isolation due to sanctions. Pompeo was scheduled to arrive in Israel on an unprecedented trip during the pandemic on May 12. At the same time, the months of March and April included numerous reports in Syrian regime media that Israel carried out airstrikes in Syria. Israel’s former chief of staff said Israel carried out more than one thousand airstrikes on Iranian targets by January 2019. In the last year, there have been more. On April 30 an airstrike took place near the Golan, and on April 15 there was one near Lebanon and one on April 27 in Damascus. There were also airstrikes reported near Homs on April 20. These appear to frame the Iranian cyberattack. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Israeli Army’s Idea Lab Aims at a New Target: Saving Lives
David M. Halbfinger
NY Times, May 7, 2020The Israeli Defense Ministry’s research-and-development arm is best known for pioneering cutting-edge ways to kill people and blow things up, with stealth tanks and sniper drones among its more lethal recent projects. But its latest mission is lifesaving. Since March, it has been spearheading a sprawling, high-speed effort to unleash some of the country’s most advanced technologies against an enemy of another kind: Covid-19.
The national undertaking is for the first time linking up major hospitals and research institutes with Israel’s vaunted high-tech sector and its military-industrial behemoths: Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the companies behind Israel’s arsenals of unmanned vehicles, missiles, and souped-up fighter jets.
Red tape, institutional rivalries, and cronyism can stand in the way of a unified, rapid response to a crisis. But Israel quickly set up a national task force and dozens of teams with hundreds of scientists, engineers, doctors, executives, government officials, and military officers all working toward the same goals. “In Israel, if there is a mission that has to be done, it’s like a war,” said Brig. Gen. Dani Gold, who is leading the charge. “Everybody drops what they’re doing, tunes into the mission, and works on the mission with a lot of energy and creativity.”
General Gold, known as the father of the Iron Dome antimissile system, leads the Directorate of Defense Research and Development, Israel’s version of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. While Darpa gave the world the internet and GPS, its Israeli counterpart has not had a similar impact on civilian life. Its work on the coronavirus, officials say, could be a start.
Here are a few of its potentially game-changing projects.
Diagnostic Tests
As some countries begin to ease antivirus restrictions, officials are clamoring for ways to quickly test masses of people and identify those who are contagious. Several Israeli start-ups are vying to develop fast diagnostic tests to smell, hear, or see the telltale characteristics of coronavirus infections.
SOUND
One company, Vocalis Health, which uses sensitive audio technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze voice and breathing, is trying to identify a vocal indicator for the coronavirus. Far-fetched as that may sound, the company has already linked vocal markers to the risk of mortality in patients with congestive heart failure and to pulmonary hypertension.
Working with Sheba Medical Center, Vocalis has been recording voice samples from Covid-19 patients in hopes of refining an app that could categorize patients’ infections as mild, moderate, or severe based on how they sound. “It’s a whole new area that I think a few years from now will be very central in health care,” said Dr. Eyal Zimlichman, the hospital’s chief medical officer and chief innovation officer. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Securing Technological Superiority Requires a Joint US-Israel Effort
Bradley Bowman
Defense News, May 23, 2020
The United States is now engaged in an intense military technology competition with the Chinese Communist Party. The ability of U.S. troops to deter and defeat great power authoritarian adversaries hangs in the balance. To win this competition, Washington must beef up its military cooperative research and development efforts with tech-savvy democratic allies. At the top of that list should be Israel.
Two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee understand this well. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced S 3775, the “United States-Israel Military Capability Act of 2020,” on Wednesday. This bipartisan legislation would require the establishment of a U.S.-Israel operations-technology working group. As the senators wrote in a February letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, the working group would help ensure U.S. “warfighters never encounter a more technologically advanced foe.”
Many Americans may be surprised to learn that they can no longer take U.S. military technological superiority for granted. In his new book, “The Kill Chain,” former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director Chris Brose notes that, over the last decade, the United States loses war games against China “almost every single time.”
To halt this trend, the Pentagon must shift its ongoing modernization efforts into high gear. Early cooperative R&D with the “Startup Nation” can help in this regard. Israel is one of America’s closest and most technologically advanced allies. The country boasts an “innovative and agile defense technology sector” that is a “global leader in many of the technologies important to the Department of Defense modernization efforts,” as the legislation notes.
Some may deem the working group unnecessary, citing the deep and broad cooperation that already exists between the United States and Israel. But, as the legislation explains, “dangerous United States military capability gaps continue to emerge that a more systematic and institutionalized United States-Israel early cooperative research and development program could have prevented.”
The U.S. military can take the lessons learned from Israel’s campaign in Syria and apply them to gray zone conflict with Iran.
Consider the fact, for example, that the Pentagon only last year acquired for U.S. tanks active protection systems from Israel that had been operational there since 2011. Consequently, U.S. soldiers operated for years in tanks and armored vehicles around the world lacking the cutting-edge protection Washington could have provided against missiles and rockets. That put U.S. soldiers in unnecessary risk.
Such examples put the burden of proof on those who may be tempted to reflexively defend the status quo as good enough.
Given the breakneck speed of our military technology race with the Chinese Communist Party, it’s clear the continued emergence of decade-long delays in adopting crucial technology is no longer something we can afford. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Gantz’s Challenges and Agenda as Newly Installed Defense Minister
Yaakov Lappin
JNS, May 19, 2020
Newly appointed Defense Minister Benny Gantz officially took up his position on Monday, delivering a speech at a modest ceremony at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. In his remarks, Gantz recalled the hundreds of times he, as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, previously walked into the defense minister’s bureau, straddling the bridge that connects the IDF’s headquarters building to the Defense Ministry building at the Kirya complex in Tel Aviv.
Gantz complimented his predecessor, Naftali Bennett, saying, “I could not but be impressed by your decision to think outside of the box and to challenge the system out of a desire to improve it.”
He also sounded a word of caution about the dangers of inflexible thinking, saying, “These days, we mark 20 years since Israel’s departure from the security zone in Lebanon … we drowned there to a certain extent in rigid thinking, which left us stuck in the same place for tens of years. Today, we must also look at the wide picture and always examine ourselves.”
Gantz’s comments addressed many of the issues set to dominate his agenda and hinted at the kind of policies he will promote as defense minister.
Setting the ‘Momentum’ plan into motion
Gantz’s first priority will undoubtedly be securing a suitable defense budget and making it a set one for the next five years, so that it can enable, at least to some extent, the implementation of the IDF’s multi-year program.
Gantz alluded to this objective when he described the need to promote the program, which is dubbed “Momentum” and is a flagship project of the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi. Kochavi’s plan is designed to enable the IDF to “deal with present threats, as well as with future threats,” noted Gantz.
With Israel entering a period of major budgetary deficit due to the coronavirus crisis and competition over state funds from other ministries expected to be fierce, Gantz will try to salvage as much of the “Momentum” plan as he can.
According to a report by Ynet, Kochavi recently told associates of the need to save “at least 70 percent of ‘Momentum,’ ” describing it as “the insurance policy for our children and grandchildren, our vaccine against the existing [and future] security threats.”
The plan envisions the creation of a sharper, more lethal, and network-based IDF, which could destroy unprecedented quantities of enemy capabilities in record time. It would create field units that receive a wealth of new capabilities. This would mean that a battalion is digitally connected to all the relevant forces in its sector and to the Intelligence Directorate. A company commander would be able to activate his own drones and use the IDF’s digital command network to activate tanks, helicopters, or electronic-warfare units immediately upon the detection of time-sensitive targets. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Israel Seeks Early Release of US Defense Funding: Arie Egozi, Breaking Defense, Apr. 23, 2020 — Israel’s Ministry of Defense and high command have hammered out an emergency plan for an appeal to Washington to make changes in the Foreign Military Funds (FMF) agreement between the U.S and Israel.
COVID-19: Israel Deploys New Mask & C2 Technologies: Arie Egozi, Breaking Defense, Apr. 10, 2020 — Israel’s Ministry of Defense and Israeli defense industries are working to develop and deploy defense technologies adapted for use in the fight against COVID-19. Israel’s Mossad managed to put its hands on critical supplies from other countries needed for Israeli hospitals.
Senators Introduce Bill to Bolster US-Israel Defense-Technology Development: Cleveland Jewish Jews, May 22, 2020 — Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill on Thursday that would enhance cooperation between the United States and Israel on developing defense technology.
The Abandonment of the South Lebanon Army: A Moral and a Strategic Failure: Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, BESA, May 24, 2020 — Even after another generation has passed, it will be hard for Israel to undo the strategic damage caused by its May 2000 abandonment of the South Lebanon Army (SLA).
How the US Can Learn from Israel to Counter Iran: Ilan Goldenberg and Kaleigh Thomas, Defense News, Apr. 23, 2020 — During the COVID-19 crisis, one would have thought the United States and Iran would find ways to reduce tensions. Instead the Trump administration refuses to relax sanctions in the midst of a pandemic, and Iranian-supported Shia militias in Iraq continue to target U.S. forces.
