In mid-March, Google announced that it was paying the staggering sum of $32 billion for the acquisition of the Israeli cloud-computing security company Wiz. The acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will be the largest ever of an Israeli firm.

What was left unsaid in Google’s announcement, however, were the personal backgrounds of its four founders. The co-founders of Wiz—Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik—are all veterans of Unit 8200, the signals intelligence division of the Israeli military, which is playing a key role in helping to carry out Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Unit 8200 is an elite unit in the Israeli military tasked with intelligence gathering, surveillance, codebreaking, as well as cybersecurity operations and hacking. In addition to its role collecting information for intelligence reports, the unit has also been accused by former veterans of carrying out mass surveillance of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories for the purpose of “political persecution,” as well as providing information used for targeted killings, sometimes based on over-broad interpretations of surveillance data.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 days ago

      lol while fair, idk they do t own a cybersecurity platform and wiz is a dope framework. Even if built by Israel.

      I’m a Palestine supporter but Israel has a hell of an Intel arm. Credit where it’s due I guess idk.