Artikel ini bukan untuk membanggakan zionis tetapi adalah untuk mengetahui, memahami dan mempelajari kekuatan dan kelemahan Zionis.
Cybersecurity in Israel involves a lot more than repelling hackers on the Internet.
While
the Israeli Defense Forces are known for their effectiveness and
resourcefulness, as you approach the Palmahim Airbase south of Tel Aviv you might be surprised to discover that this is a world-class military facility.
Exiting the highway to a road that is only occasionally paved, there's an abandoned cinderblock facility surrounded by a wire fence
with tires and metal objects strewn across the open grassy area. It
looks more like something you'd expect in a post-industrial town in
Pennsylvania or Ohio than on the base of one of the most high tech fighting forces in the world.
As
we drive past the building and head toward our rendezvous, our two IDF
handlers turn around and smile and remind us of the rules. The person
we're going to meet can only be referred to as "Major S," for safety and
security reasons. While our handlers are both young ladies with an air
of sweetness and optimism about them, on this point they speak with an
unequivocal authority and finality—despite the smiles.
Both are wearing green military fatigues
and in the spare moments between their duties as communications reps
they are happy to unfold the berets strapped to the shoulders of their
uniforms and explain how the colors represent the division of the IDF
that they serve. Slender, petite, and energetic, in the U.S. they would
likely be preparing for a soccer game or a senior prom. In Israel, the
two conscripts are leading a small group of journalists to meet a military officer who runs an operation that protects millions of citizens.
When
Major S enters, he looks barely older than the two conscripts. His
green uniform is a one-piece flight suit. The sleeves are pushed up his
forearms and the zipper on the front is open down to mid-chest, showing a
gray t-shirt underneath. His shy smile makes him look even younger. But
when his face straightens, it unmasks a care-worn look in his eyes that
reflects all the Israelis in constant danger that he must help protect.
Major S stands in front of a UAV. | Image: Jason Hiner
These kids have old souls.
Major
S is the deputy commander of the First UAV Squadron, a division of the
Israeli Air Force. Despite his babyface smile, he's actually 30 years
old with over a decade of service in the military. The Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles that he manages are the eyes in the sky that keep watch on
Israel's borders as well as some of its aggressive neighbors who would
love nothing better than to push modern Israel into the sea and pretend
it never existed. Israel relies on the UAVs to run at least 50 hours of
operations every day, according to Major S. Obviously, that means they
are running multiple drones in multiple locations at all times. That's a
lot of data.
"The most important thing is to collect information... every day of the year," says Major S.
A UAV hovers at 10,000 feet, he says. "You can't hear it and you can't see it from the ground."
Of
course, the cynical view is that Israel uses UAVs to spy on its
neighbors and invade their airspace. But, Israel has been facing
existential threats from its neighbors since the day the modern State of
Israel was founded on May 15, 1948 as a result of a UN resolution.
Israel has had a bitter peace with Egypt since 1979. It's had a slightly
more cordial peace with Jordan since 1994. Lebanon and Syria remain
sworn enemies. And, the country's tenuous relationship with the
Palestinian territories (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) is well
known.
For the moment, Gaza is the biggest problem spot. When
Israel withdrew its occupying forces from Gaza in 2005, the radical
elements of Palestine used it to seize power and have been firing
rockets at Israeli cities ever since. Israel has, of course, retaliated
and civilians have been caught in the crossfire on both sides, but
Israel has been losing the PR war. The Palestinians have done a far
better job of publicizing the attacks against them and helping create a
narrative in the international media that paints Israel as a callous
oppressor.
Image: IDF
Major
S opens his laptop and plays a video from the bird's eye view of the
drone. In this case, a UAV has identified a suicide bomber and is
tracking it. The UAV operator is communicating with ground forces to
intercept it. Just as they are about to pounce on it, the UAV operator
frantically interrupts and tells them to wait as he spots Palestinian
kids up ahead of where the bomber’s vehicle is heading. After it clears
the area, we see the IDF vehicles cut off the car bomber and the IDF
soldiers jump out and surround the car. A soldier with body armour
approaches the suicide bomber in the driver's seat, gets hit with
several bullets, but pulls the driver out of the vehicle and the
soldiers apprehend him. No harm done.
"In the Gaza Strip there are
1.5 to 2 million people and most of them are not terrorists," says
Major S. "They just want to live their lives like me and my family. But
our enemies know that and they try to [hide near civilians]."
He
shows a couple more videos where disasters were averted and Palestinian
and Israeli lives were saved from potential attacks. But, he won't let
us publish the videos. He says they have released very few of these to
the public in the past and he's always reluctant to allow it, because
every video will be studied by terrorists and used to figure out how to
evade the UAVs.
His implicit message is that his job is
not to feed information to the press to make Israel look more
sympathetic to the international community. His job is to protect lives.
As polite as he is, it's clear that every moment he spends with us is a
moment he's not doing his real job, and he needs to get back to it.
He
says there is a warehouse that the UAVs have been continually tracking
for three weeks. They know there is "bad stuff" being stored in there.
As soon as that stuff starts to move then there's going to be a big
problem that will need to be handled. His team is working with Israeli
intelligence to make sure it doesn't turn into a tragic incident.
"It's a race. Everybody tries to get more capabilities and better technology." Major S
He
walks us out to the hangars where the UAVs are located along with the
command stations where the UAV operators run them. The command stations
are like a whirlwind marriage between a sit-down arcade video game and a
server room.
UAVs are the future, Major S asserts. The Israeli
Air Force keeps closing down traditional squadrons and keeps opening new
UAV squadrons. He also pointed to the fact the F-35 is the last manned fighter jet that the Americas are going to make. It's an inevitable trend.
"The
wars we have today are not the same as what we had 20 years ago," he
says. "It's a race. Everybody tries to get more capabilities and better
technology."
He gestures toward one of the newest drones. "If everyone is using this, then the one with the best technology wins."
Israel, the innovator
Israel bewilders you with its contrasts and contradictions.
The
Old City of Jerusalem mercilessly floods your senses with its history.
Whether you seek out its stories or not, this ancient place will not
allow you to remain indifferent to the countless millions who across 60
centuries have streamed here in search of answers to big questions.
The Old City of Jerusalem has a lot of stories to tell. | Image credit: Jason Hiner
Not
far away, the modern cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be'er Sheva pulse
with the resistless energy of people searching for answers to smaller
questions that fill every day, every hour, every moment.
Israel is
a land of mystery, science, faith, reason, tension, and peace. Today,
it is most widely known for its long-smoldering geopolitical conflict
and its religious sites held sacred by four world faiths. But, the
aspect of modern Israel that is having the most significant impact on
global civilization in the 21st century often goes under the radar.
Since
the rise of the personal computer, Israel has been quietly making major
contributions to the technologies that are transforming humanity and
giving people tools to solve age-old problems in powerful and exciting
news ways. And, these contributions to the global technology ecosystem
have accelerated in the past two decades.
Israel was one of the
progenitors of the PC revolution in the 1980s when Intel's lab in Haifa
designed the 8088 chip that powered the original IBM PC. Intel's Israeli
team later created the Pentium chip that helped spread PC computing to
the masses.
In the middle of the last decade, Intel's innovators
in Israel pushed past objections from their U.S. counterparts and got
the company to focus on power-conservation rather than raw speed and
delivered the Centrino chip that fueled the growth of laptops. Then the Israelis pioneered multi-core processors to
deliver Intel's groundbreaking Core product line that turned Intel
around at one of its most difficult moments. Now, it's the Israeli team
at Intel that is leading the company's charge into mobile processors.
Intel's new facility in
Haifa sets a high standard for green buildings. | Image: Intel
The
world's most important tech companies run Israeli research centers,
including Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Oracle, SAP, EMC,
Motorola, HP, Facebook, and eBay. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously said that
Microsoft was an Israeli company almost as much as an American company
since Microsoft has so many workers in Israel and the work they are
doing is so important to the company's future.
Intel and IBM
opened research centers in Israel in the 1970s and hired lots of Israeli
engineers. More often, tech giants have bolstered their presence in
Israel by acquiring startups. Cisco alone has purchased at least 10
Israeli startups (that we know about), including Intucell in January 2013 for $475 million. In July 2013, Google bought the popular Waze mapping software for $1 billion, shining an even brighter spotlight on Israeli startups.
Israel has been dubbed "The Startup Nation"
because it has the highest density of startups per capita in the
world—one for every 1,844 citizens (or 2.5 times the U.S. rate). More
Israeli companies are listed on the NASDAQ than from all European
companies combined. Israel ranks third in the world for venture capital
availability and second in the world in the availability of qualified
scientists and engineers. Yet, this is a tiny country with roughly the
same land mass as New Jersey.
The story of how this undersized,
continually-threatened nation of 7.5 million people—less than the
population of New York City—has become one of the pre-eminent players in
the tech world is complicated. Plenty of journalists, researchers, and
government officials from across the globe have probed this issue and
argued with each other about the genesis of Israel’s technological
success.
The influx of technically-savvy Russian immigrants in
1990s played a big part. Conscription of young Israelis into the
entrepreneurial ethos of the IDF was an important factor. Facing
continual geopolitical conflicts created the confidence to solve
problems that others deemed impossible. The fact that many of Israel's
founders were scientists and intellectuals certainly laid the groundwork
for placing a high cultural value on technology. But, above all, the
fact that Israel is such a small country with limited resources
confronting multiple simultaneous threats means it must rely on better
tools and automation and ingenuity in order to survive.
In one sense, Israel is defined and bolstered by threats against it.
That's
also how Israel has created such a center of excellence around
cybersecurity. The combination of the country's perpetual concern with
defense and its technological prowess have turned cybersecurity into one
of its most important exports. In 2013 alone, IBM, Cisco, and GE have all made large acquisitions or investments in Israeli cybersecurity companies.
And, because of the new security and privacy issues being raised by the
spread of cloud computing, that trend is very likely to accelerate.
The economic anchor
September
3, 2013 opened a new chapter in the history of the tech industry and
cybersecurity in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the
inauguration of the Advanced Technology Park on the campus of Ben Gurion
University in Be'er Sheva.
"Today we are launching the economic
anchor that will turn Be'er Sheva into a national and international
center for cybernetics and cybersecurity," Netanyahu said at the opening
ceremony. "This is a day that will change the history of the State of
Israel and we are doing it here in Be'er Sheva."
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu (center right) cuts the ribbon inaugurating the ATP. | Credit:
BGU
Culturally,
geographically, and technically, things had been leading up to this
critical event for a long time. In fact, some of the seeds were planted
all the way back at the birth of modern Israel by the country's first
prime minister. Nevertheless, this has the signs of a historical turning
point written all over it—groundbreaking cooperation among powerful
forces, coalescing resources, economic gravitas, and impeccable timing.
ATP creates a symbiotic relationship between three potent entities:
1. Academia
2. Tech companies
3. The Israeli Defense Forces
1. Academia
2. Tech companies
3. The Israeli Defense Forces
Where
the magic is expected to happen is in co-locating these three onto
adjacent campuses where they can collaborate on projects, share data,
and feed each other's needs for talent, resources, and thought
leadership.
"This is a day that will change the history of the State of Israel and we are doing it here in Be'er Sheva." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
The
ribbon-cutting on September 3 marked the official opening of Building
#1 of the ATP. This is where the tech industry is taking up residence in
a commercial park that will consist of 16 buildings on 23 acres,
including office space, labs, a hotel, and a conference center. The ATP
is connected to the main campus of BGU by a new walking bridge, with a
new train station running right between them so that it can easily whisk
scholars, professionals, and soldiers from Be'er Sheva to Tel Aviv, the
current technology capital of the country.
The first tenants of
Building #1 include tech industry stalwarts Deutsche Telekom, EMC, RSA,
and Oracle, as well as three incubators—Jerusalem Venture Partner's
CyberLabs, Elbit Incubit, and BGN Technologies (a BGU entity that
commercializes academic research). Venture capital firms are in
negotiations to take up residence in Building #2, which is currently in
development and will open in early 2015.
One of BGU's key catalysts in bridging the gap between academia and industry is its commercialization arm, BGN Technologies,
which uses a unique model for what it calls "technology transfer." That
is the way that the university takes valuable breakthroughs and brings
them to market by partnering with a company or selling the company a
patent. BGN Technologies has signed agreements with over 150 companies,
including ExxonMobile, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, and General
Motors. BGN Technologies has been so successful at this that
universities from the U.S. and Europe are studying their approach.
"Our model is that we have no model, which is the strength of it." Dr. Moti Herskowitz on BGU's approach to commercializing tech research
Dr. Orna Berry,
corporate vice president at EMC, said, "Normally, researchers do not
have good business understanding, so matching researchers with
businesses is really the job of [BGN Technologies] and I think they are
doing a fantastic job... They go beyond what a commercialization office
at a university normally does."
Dr. Moti Herskowitz,
BGU's Dean of Research and Development, said that when it comes to
technology transfer, U.S. universities tend to want to own everything
and then sell the rights, and so they don't sell very much.
"Our model is that we have no model," said Herskowitz, "which is the strength of it. We deal with it case by case."
Building #1 of the ATP
opened Sept. 3. It is the first of 16 commercial buildings. | Image: BGU
Netta
Cohen, CEO of BGN Technologies, which is wholly owned by BGU but
operates as an independent business, said that academia and industry
have different goals, different languages, and different cultures. BGN
Technologies exists to translate and put together deals. Some companies
simply want to buy the rights to develop a technology. Others want to do
a joint venture and create a new corporation. Others want BGU to
function as their R&D and then the company simply brings the product
to market. Thus, BGN Technologies treats every agreement like a
"tailored suit" said Cohen. And, it's working. BGU now generates 16% of
its research income from the industry agreements negotiated by BGN
Technologies. In the U.S., universities generate an average of 7% from
industry deals.
BGU expects its numbers to to accelerate with the launch of the ATP.
Dr.
Rikva Carmi, BGU President, said, "We are already leaders, but… the
fact that leading high tech companies are going to dwell across the
street from us is definitely going to boost it very, very much... This
is the only place in Israel where there is such an intimate relationship
between the industry and academia, and actually an on-going
collaborative project. There are relationships with the industry at
other universities but it is not like [having] one campus. For our
purposes, the ATP and the university is one campus."
"For our purposes, the ATP and the university is one campus." BGU President Rikva Carmi
As
a university, BGU has long been overshadowed as an epicenter of Israeli
technology by Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute of
Science near Tel Aviv, and the Technion (Israel Institute of
Technology) in Haifa. Partly, this is due to the fact that Technion
(1912), Hebrew University (1918), and Weizmann (1934) have had decades
of a head start on BGU, founded in 1969. Part of it is also due to
geography. Weizmann, Hebrew, and Technion are located in Israel's three
largest and most developed cities—Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa,
respectively.
Tel Aviv is currently Israel's undisputed tech
capital. In fact, The Wall Street Journal has called it "Europe's main
technology hub." With a population of 400,000, Tel Aviv is twice the
size of Be'er Sheva and is home to over 1200 high tech companies and 700
early-stage startups. About two-thirds of all seed stage startups in
Israel are currently located in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. However,
if there's one thing that the ATP threatens to change more than
anything else, it is moving the nexus of the Israeli tech community 70
miles southwest to Be'er Sheva.
Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva: Tech hot spots. | Image: Jason Hiner
A
big part of that is due to the other force multiplier connected to the
launch of the ATP: The new IDF Technology Campus will sit directly next
to the commercial buildings of the ATP and will have its own connecting
walkway to the campus. There, it will become the new home for the IDF's
elite technology units, which will be relocating and centralizing in
Be'er Sheva. This will include 5,000 professional staff and cyber
soldiers from the IDF's Center of Computing and Information Systems. The
vast majority of these jobs will be migrating from Tel Aviv.
According
to Carmi, these IDF units will be focused on a combination of
traditional cybersecurity plus analyzing data from Israel's borders and
sensors that relay information on both physical and digital security. A
major component of the IDF's plan involves building a facility that
paves the way for collaboration with academia and industry.
"It's not going to look like an army barracks," said Carmi. "It's not even going to have a fence. It's a virtual fence."
Cybersecurity prowess
Ben
Gurion University has been quietly developing cybersecurity prowess for
a decade. It has also been laying the groundwork for the kind of
public-private collaboration that is the foundation of the ATP. The
stimulus, in both cases, has been a partnership with Deutche Telekom,
which came to BGU looking for an ally to collaborate on tech research.
In 2004, the German telecommunications giant created Telekom Innovation Laboratories (called "T-Labs") and chose BGU as an affiliate to focus on security. T-Labs also opened three labs in Germany and a Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Mountain View, California.
"We
have a very good model," said BGU President Carmi. "Deutche Telekom is a
very successful collaboration between industry and academia. It has
been part of our university for almost 10 years and the kind of students
and startups that have come out of this collaboration are really
amazing. The whole field of cybersecurity that we are now leading in
Israel was actually developed based on this project with Deutche
Telekom."
Today, BGU has 20 students (18 graduate students and 2
post-graduate students) working in its Telekom Innovation Laboratories.
BGU now offers a masters degree in cybersecurity (technically in
Information Systems Engineering with a specialty in Cybersecurity). This
graduate degree is closely intertwined with the work for Telekom
Innovation Laboratories.
Much of the research that BGU is doing
as part of T-Labs focuses on the most important security issues in the
tech world today—especially social media and mobile computing. But,
Deutche Telekom will sometimes come to BGU with specific questions.
The ATP is across a walking
bridge from BGU and next to the new IDF Tech Campus. | Image: BGU
"We
were asked by Deutche Telekom to analyze Android to tell whether it is
secure," said Dr. Yuval Elovici, Director of BGU's Deutsche Telekom
Laboratories and a Professor in BGU's Department of Information Systems
Engineering. Dr. Elovici's team of graduate students concluded that
Android was "relatively secure." One of the big weaknesses they
pinpointed was that Android updates can be used to hijack a device or
inject code.
His team has largely discovered: "Any mobile phone
today can be attacked and compromised," said Elovici. "They are many,
many ways to compromise it."
However, their research also
revealed that crowdsourcing information from mobile devices could be
used for the public good. For example, the gyroscope motion detector in
the iPhone is sensitive and accurate enough to detect earthquakes. If
enough iPhone users in earthquake zones opted in to a service, then it
could rapidly create a low-cost early detection system.
Where Elovici's team has made its biggest contribution is in the security and privacy issues surrounding social media.
"We were asked by Deutche Telekom to analyze Android to tell whether it is secure." Yuval Elovici, Professor of Information Systems Engineering
"We are very, very concerned about the issue of privacy," said Elovici.
His
BGU graduate students have been digging deep on the privacy issues of
social networks for several years, since before Facebook, Twitter, and
Linkedin became so ubiquitous. Of course, that makes their research more
relevant now than ever.
One of their big discoveries is how much
data can be discovered about a person over the web even if they have a
tightly-controlled social profile or don't participate in social
networks at all. Age, education, main interests, and other important
facts can be derived fairly quickly based on your friends on social
networks (or simply by knowing who a few of your close real-world
friends are, if you don't have a profile on social networks, and then
data mining their information on social networks).
"Our control of our profile isn't in our hands any more," said Elovici. "It's in the hands of our friends."
This
research was published but it was pulled from the web because it was so
controversial. It was feared that the information could be more useful
to bad guys trying to perpetrate these acts than by average users to
protect themselves. Now, they are exploring a system that people could
connect to that could keep them from being profiled so easily.
"The
risk from pedophiles is even stronger," Elovici said. "There are people
who are creating fake profiles and connecting to teenagers and then
selling them to pedophiles."
This future rendition of
the ATP shows Building #1 plus the rest of the buildings filled in. |
Image: BGU
BGU's
research concluded that 5%-10% of Facebook profiles are fake and these
fake profiles are often being used for nefarious purposes, especially by
pedophiles and occasionally by agents of industrial espionage. This
project was led by one of the program's star grad students, Michael
Fire, along with two undergraduate students.
The students not only pinpointed the problem, but they coded a solution. In 2012, they created the Social Privacy Protector,
which functions as a Firefox Add-on or a Facebook app (for any
browser). It scans your friends list in Facebook and based on the
"connectedness" algorithm that the BGU students devised it then flags
potentially-suspicious accounts that you have friended. You can then
either restrict the information they can see about you or defriend them.
Fire,
who is a Ph.D student in Information Systems Engineering, said, "While
Facebook encourages connecting with as many people as possible, we
advocate limiting users, and have, for the first time, provided an
algorithm to scientifically determine who to remove from friend lists...
An important feature of our app is the ability for parents to better
protect their kids’ privacy with just one click instead of having to
navigate the more complicated Facebook privacy settings."
Beyond
mobile devices and social networks, the BGU researchers involved with
Telekom Innovation Laboratories are also tackling Advanced Persistent
Threats (APTs), honeytokens and more. If you look at the work that BGU
has already done in this one public-private partnership with Deutche
Telekom then you can understand why they are so bullish about getting a
whole fleet of tech industry giants located across the street. And then,
next to that is going to be all of the top technical talent of the
Israeli Defense Forces, ready to collaborate in order to find solutions
to impossible problems and push Israel's technical advantage farther and
faster.
Rise of the Negev
Israelis treasure a biblical
verse in Isaiah 35:1-2 that predicts: "The wilderness and the solitary
place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom
as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and
singing."
Israel's founding father and first prime minister,
David Ben Gurion, who was far more pragmatic than spiritual,
nevertheless kept a copy of this verse on his desk. To Ben Gurion, this
prophecy encapsulated the hope and the possibilities of Israel's Negev
desert. He believed science would unlock those secrets and create those
opportunities. He even did a little bit of future forecasting of his
own.
The natural beauty of the Negev desert can surprise you. | Image: Jason Hiner
Ben
Gurion predicted, "The South will be at the center of Israel's activity
and concern. Only in these areas is there a little open space, totally
absent in the North, and there is room for additional extensive
settlement based on agriculture and pasture as well as on workshops,
mines and industry... Only researchers and scientists who live within
the gates of the Negev ... will succeed in revealing what is concealed
in the bosom of the earth, and the Dead Sea. They will study the
blessings of the sky and the sun and the uppermost air which shower
endless treasures of energy, dew, winds and beneficial rays which go to
waste because we do not yet know how to utilize them to make the
wilderness blossom."
Named after the nation's first prime
minister, Ben Gurion University of the Negev is the school's official
title. Even most of the locals shorten it to Ben Gurion University or
BGU, so it's easy to overlook the fact that the Negev remains one of
BGU's greatest geographical and political assets—and one of its most
defining characteristics.
Be'er Sheva, where BGU is based, sits on
the northern edge of the Negev, but serves as its cultural and
administrative capital. It's a biblical city (sometimes called
"Beersheba") with connections to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When the UN
divided up Israel and Palestine in 1948, Be'er Sheva was actually part
of the Palestinian territory. However, during the proceeding
Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the Israeli Defense Forces defeated the
Egyptian Army in Be'er Sheva and it has been a Jewish city ever since.
In fact, there are so few Arabs left in the city that Be'er Sheva's
traditional mosque has been converted into the archeological museum of
the Negev, despite legal objections from some of the Muslim citizens in Israel.
Today,
Be'er Sheva has a population of 200,000 and is one of Israel's fastest
growing cities. Meanwhile, outside of Be'er Sheva, there are about
170,000 semi-nomadic Arab bedouin who roam the Negev. It is a stark
contrast between a rapidly-advancing modern civilization and a
traditional culture that feels increasingly threatened about its future.
Nevertheless, there are also now bedouin students attending BGU as
well.
The Negev as a whole is the hottest region in Israel, both literally and figuratively.
It
comprises Israel's southern desert and it has a completely different
character than the coastal towns of Tel Aviv and Haifa or the Jerusalem
plateau. As you drive from those northern cities with their cypress
trees, sloping hills, and ample ground cover and pass into the Negev
with its rocky terrain, craggy mountains, and sparse vegetation, there's
no doubt that you have passed from one place into another. The color
change from green to brown is unmistakable. The Negev is a desert, but
it's not the kind with blowing sand dunes like you see in the movies.
It's more like an ancient gravel driveway, stretching and rippling in
every direction. If that sounds ominous and undesirable, then the
untamed beauty of the Negev can surprise you.
The Negev represents
60% of the land mass of Israel, but is home to only 9% of the
population. It is an arid climate that averages only 8 inches of
rainfall per year, but the Israelis have turned the Negev into the only
desert in the world that is currently receding. Using a combination of
high-tech and low-tech research and best practices, Israel has taken
advantage of the benefits of the desert while making it a more
productive and hospital place to live. Israel has changed grazing
patterns of animals, adopted ancient Nabataean farming techniques for
growing crops in areas with minimal rainfall, and become a world leader
in solar energy research. Israel now reuses over 70% of the country's
waste water (mostly then reused for farming the arid land), more than
any other country in the world. In second place is Spain, which reuses
17%. The U.S. reuses 1%.
BGU has 20,000 students. | Image: Jason Hiner
Despite
the fact that David Ben Gurion and other politicians have been calling
the Negev "the future of the country" for over 60 years, the Israeli
people have been slow to migrate to the region. Until recently, Be'er
Sheva felt too provincial and remote to tempt many citizens of the
developed cities of the north to relocate to the desert. However, the
city of Be'er Sheva has created cultural momentum over the past decade
by developing the arts, theater, libraries, and culinary diversity. This
has been funded in part by American Jews who have embraced the vision
of the Negev and used their philanthropy to help fund the expansion of
BGU and Be'er Sheva.
Over three decades ago, David Ben Gurion put
his money where his mouth was and moved to the Negev in 1970 after he
retired from public life. Now that the national government, the Israeli
Defense Forces, and the technology industry have fully bought into the
future of the Negev, the region is expecting explosive economic and
population growth over the next decade. The population of the Negev is projected to double to 1.2 million in 2025.
That's
another part of the motivation for the ATP. Carmi said, "The basic idea
for the park is to provide for high tech jobs for our graduates, for
our [students in] computer engineering, computer science, data systems
and all kinds of high tech departments, so they stay in the Negev and so
they don't go to Tel Aviv."
However, one of the challenges to
drawing more citizens to Be'er Sheva is the fact that it's currently in
missile range from Gaza and has been a regular target. Be'er Sheva
residents have had to get used to regular warning sirens and taking
shelter in pre-designated areas. When I was taken to the BGU dorms for
visiting scholars and other guests, one of the first things they showed
me was where to take shelter if a missile warning went off.
Israel's new Iron Dome
defense system has reduced the potential effects of these attacks, but
it hasn't reduced the terror of the regular warnings. And, the Iron Dome
itself makes bigger, scarier noises than the missiles they are
intercepting, in many cases, which adds to the terror for many Be'er
Sheva residents.
"Be'er Sheva is great, except for the missiles." Michael Fire, BGU graduate student in cybersecurity
This
has affected a number of pioneering Israelis who have made the move to
Be'er Sheva in order to support the momentum at BGU. One such
professional has suffered from severe anxiety because of dealing with
all of the missile warnings. Another has had to deal with family
conflict because of a spouse being separated from family in the north
along with the emotional toll of nurturing small children through all
the missile warnings and evacuations. In both cases, they remain firmly
committed to BGU and the larger mission of building the future in the
Negev.
Michael Fire, the star BGU graduate student in cybersecurity, said, "Be'er Sheva is great, except for the missiles."
And yet,
there's also the flipside to consider. You can make an argument that
the constant threats don't ever let BGU researchers or IDF cyber
soliders or even commercial businesses forget what's ultimately at
stake. That remains one of intangible factors of Israel's success as a
tech innovator. For six decades, Israel's existence has been continually
under threat. That keeps Israelis sharp. It keeps them focused. It has
also forged a pragmatism, a resourcefulness, and a disdain for hierarchy
and protocol. They do whatever it takes to find workable answers to
impossible problems, and they've learned how to maximize limited
resources to do it.
"The opening of the Advanced Technologies Park in Be'er Sheva will be remembered as the turning point in the development of the Negev." BGU President Rikva Carmi
With
the ATP, BGU and the State of Israel are counting on the combination of
that pragmatism with the collaboration of academia, industry, and the
IDF to speed up the development of cybersecurity, fight the new
frontiers of national security threats in the 21st century, and tap
these developments to incubate commercial products to improve
information security across the globe.
That's an aggressive
mandate, but if it succeeds then it's destined to magnify the role that
Israel's tech ecosystem is going to play on the global stage in the
years ahead.
BGU president Carmi proclaimed, "The opening of the
Advanced Technologies Park in Be'er Sheva will be remembered as the
turning point in the development of the Negev. We have always been at
the geographical heart of Israel. Now we are on our way to becoming the
true center for innovation and growth."
The next Silicon Valley?
The
vision for BGU's Advanced Technology Park came the school's former
president, Avishay Braverman, who led BGU from 1990-2006 and before that
served as a senior economist for the World Bank.
“My dream that
Ben Gurion University will do for Be'er Sheva what Stanford University
did for Silicon Valley begins,” Braverman said in a pre-recorded message
that was played at the ATP inauguration. The former economist,
educator, and administrator is now a member of Israel's Knesset (legislature).
To see more of Jason
Hiner's photos from Israel, click the photo above. | Image: Jason Hiner
However,
in order for BGU and the Negev to become the next Silicon Valley, it's
still going to need two major factors to develop.
First, it will
need an even larger infusion of venture capital. While Israel attracts
the most venture capital per capita of any nation in the world and
Israelis are remarkably resourceful, the ecosystem will still need more
if it is going to play in the big leagues with Silicon Valley. The U.S.
generates about $30 billion in VC investment annually. Israel generates
about $2 billion.
Second, Israel in general and the Negev
specifically are also going to need flagship technology brands to arise
in Israel and become global anchors in their own right, rather than sell
to American firms. It needs its own Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, or
Amazon. Or more likely, it's going to need several of them, with
headquarters in the Negev flanking the ATP.
Still, if you're
looking for where the next Silicon Valley could coalesce, then Ben
Gurion University of the Negev is one of the most important places to
watch. The groundbreaking work they are doing in public-private
partnerships, the cooperation with the Israeli Defense Forces, the sense
of mission and destiny that Israelis have about the Negev, and the
determination, urgency, and resourcefulness that have been created by
Israel's 65-year existential crisis are creating an environment where
technology, cybersecurity, and entrepreneurship are uniquely positioned
to succeed.
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