"Being from Israel, Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere and was able to procure himself a real-life cyber spy [his co-founder] from the famed Unit 8200 (kinda like Israel’s version of the NSA)" [0]
?
Every Israeli tech company likely has multiple developers from Unit 8200 in it. Whether it's building e-commerce shops or making video games.
While 8200 definitely falls under the military intelligence wing, I don't think describing people in it as Cyber Spies is anywhere near accurate. And unless that guy was very high ranking it is a stretch to imply that's an indication that IL military intelligence is involved in the company.
That is not to say that the military isn't involved with the company - that might very well be true, just that someone being from Unit 8200 isn't an indication of it.
Judging an Israeli citizen on their IDF ties is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.
In today's political climate where people around the world see Israel judging (and sentencing, and carrying out the punishment) every Palestinian as terrorists, I think this wide brush of judging Israelis on their ties with the IDF is probably widely accepted as "only fair". When it comes to Unit 8200 the implications are even stronger.
But I don't get the US public school system reference. You have to start with a baseline and if you see a private Ivy League school on someone's CV and a random public school on someone else's I'm sure you'll probably make the obvious assumption about which one is better, even if sometimes the obvious is wrong.
No, people who live in tiny countries with mandatory conscription don't really understand that it means that their entire country is militarized. It's not surprising that fish can't see water.
> is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.
It's exactly like that. If public school in the US trained people to kill and spy, it would be entirely safe to assume that the US was full of killer spies. For example, if you know that US public school taught a view of world history that was distorted in particular ways, and had very little emphasis in foreign languages, it would be safe to assume that Americans have a distorted view of the world, and largely don't speak foreign languages.
I don't know, this seems basic to me.
If an intelligence agency wants to compromise a service, they have much more discreet, powerful, and deniable ways to accomplish this.
Does this mean much given that israel has mandatory military service? Unlike in the US where you have to make a conscious choice (eg. patriotism or desperation) to join the CIA/NSA/military, that's not really the case in israel. "has ties to unit 8200" might as well mean "has ties to stanford/MIT/caltech" or "has ties to big tech".
Are you going to stop using Linux because the NSA is a major code contributor?
Huawei is too, and they were founded by a guy from the PLA.
It would be naive to think Huawei is isn’t influenced by CCP, specially if it is found, by presumably someone from PLA intelligence unit by your suggestion.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nvidia-plans-to-boost-presence...
I wouldn't hand my intelligence secrets to people who resented being forced to be there; or to mouthy people I thought might blab about it after the end of their service; or to people with an anti-authority streak or at risk of a Snowden-style attack of conscience about civil liberties.
I would select for people with a deep love of their country; and a sense of loyalty that would extend well beyond the end of their service. The rest I'd send elsewhere - plenty of other units need tech folks, that drone/radio/printer isn't going to fix itself.
Well, I know people there from all groups you mentioned. Especially the "resented being forced to be there", which is very common in all parts of the army, with people counting down the days until their 2-3 years are over. It didn't feel like the unit selected against this, choosing to accept it because of the technical skills of who they accepted.
(And yes, this is a new account. I've been on Hacker News for years, this is just for privacy reasons.)
Yes. Mandatory military service is still military service. It's still following government orders at an impressionable age in a culture that deliberately inculcates a mentality of following orders even when they go against your every human instinct. It still means working for an organisation that knows its job is killing people, even if you're not the one pulling the trigger yourself. And Israeli military intelligence specifically has a long history of keeping supposedly retired civilians on as sleeper agents who infiltrate supposedly neutral companies.
(Does that mean this guy specifically is definitely one of them? Of course not. But to anyone with reason to be using a VPN at all it's probably too much of a risk)
https://cyberinsider.com/private-internet-access-kape-crossr...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45476243
etc etc etc etc.
As you yourself put it there, you are happy to have moderation abuse pointed out but when I do, you just ban me.
Such a wasted potential and time to move on.
Since your account isn't banned, you must be talking about a different account. Why not link to it so readers can make up their own minds?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Similarly: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
What do you think @dang ?