Analysis
US Cyber Command military personnel participating an a joint cyber defense exercise dubbed “Cyber Dome” with the IDF. Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
CTech – Every year, several months before their enlistment into the Israeli military, a group of young men, as well as some young women, enroll in an intensive intelligence course dedicated to learning offensive cyber techniques. Afterwards, they go on to join some of the IDF’s various intelligence and technological units. The best of them are selected to join a special unit, that was once referred to generically as the Intelligence Corp’s Technological Unit, but in recent years, after the military censor approved for it to be called by its official name, has been exposed as Unit 81. Once in the unit, they meet the officers that manage its array of departments and teams, mostly graduates of the Talpiot program that combines university studies with service in the prestigious technological unit. They serve in the un