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The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

ft.com

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Re: The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

#31

Post by monocasa »

onyva wrote: post #3

Well, it want be a product because israeli companies never bring anything to the market, just create hype and exit as soon as they can. In general the state of IT in Israel is quite sad from usability and design perspective. Most of it looks like it was developed in the 90s and was never touched again (ie my university’s e-learning platform). As for consumer products, was there anything after Epilady?

All main Intel uArchs since after Pentium 4 are derived from Israeli work. They did the Pentium M, which became the Core series after Intel finally figured out they weren't going to get 10GHz 30 stage pipeline Pentium 4s. The Israeli group's work basically saved Intel in the mid 2000s from AMD's competition.

Re: The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

#33

Post by danny_taco »

seonsakke wrote: post #24

Great business model combination by these companies. The one focuses on hacking, the other on protecting from hacking. I would think that the different national intelligence agencies would have high interest in infiltrating such companies.

It's quite clever actually, why spend resources to try and infiltrate them - which is not a guarantee, when you can pay a fraction of the cost for their capabilities so you can focus your efforts on other nation states or your own citizens.

Re: The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

#34

Post by duxup »

bhouston wrote: post #23
upofadown wrote: post #18

The NSO Group's technology ends up being an oppression enabler in practice. Citizen Lab has been quite critical: * https://citizenlab.ca/?s=nso+group

I view working for NSO Group is no different than working for any arms company. And there is a lot of money to be made selling arms to despots and dictators. In part, because it is those leaders who have the least legitimacy are those who are the most insecure and feel need the strongest tools to solidify their rule. Secure leaders do not need to stockpile arms, nor do they need to forcibly suppress their dissidents…

>Secure leaders do not need to stockpile arms

Well that can be more of a factor of what their foreign policy is / situation is and less about internal legitimacy.

Maybe better said they don't need to stockpile arms for domestic use as much if they feel secure / legitimate.

Re: The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

#35

Post by eli_gottlieb »

krembo wrote: post #11
onyva wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about hardware. Though even based on the software products mentioned here, why Israel a startup nation? There are other countries other than USA, that had success with more products and far less hype. Again, from usability and design perspective, internal market, Israel’s infrastructure is very backward. Universities, banks, governments ... everything was developed by one company, a contractor of Microsoft Is…

On top of my head only from HW perspective, one of biggest Intel microprocessors R&D centers is located in Haifa IL (recently leading the Ice Lake - Core i9) and manufacturing center in Kiryat Gat. Intel also acquired MobileEye for their autonomous cars technology. Apple had a few acquisitions in the recent years such as Primesense (the inventors of MS XBOX Kinect sensors), KLA acquired Orbotech, IBM acquired Trustee…

Still, the country is terrible at turning successful startups into big, stable firms.

Re: The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

#36

Post by ronenmiz »

onyva wrote: post #3

Well, it want be a product because israeli companies never bring anything to the market, just create hype and exit as soon as they can. In general the state of IT in Israel is quite sad from usability and design perspective. Most of it looks like it was developed in the 90s and was never touched again (ie my university’s e-learning platform). As for consumer products, was there anything after Epilady?

What about Waze?

Re: The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

#37

Post by seonsakke »

danny_taco wrote: post #33
seonsakke wrote: post #24

Great business model combination by these companies. The one focuses on hacking, the other on protecting from hacking. I would think that the different national intelligence agencies would have high interest in infiltrating such companies.

It's quite clever actually, why spend resources to try and infiltrate them - which is not a guarantee, when you can pay a fraction of the cost for their capabilities so you can focus your efforts on other nation states or your own citizens.

Good point: I think the cost of buying the service is much lower than the cost of any covert operations or infiltration. (This is a pure guess.)
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