Former prime minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday said that “October 7 was an epic colossal failure of the State of Israel.”
Speaking at the Tel Aviv University Cyber Week Conference, he said, “We failed in intelligence, in operations, and for a month after the attacks, institutional Israel, almost all government ministries melted down, education, welfare, finance – nothing worked.”
At the same time, he said that civil society in Israel “drove down into that inferno” to rescue thousands of people from Hamas’s invasion, many of whom were volunteers with no real duty.
Bennett's hope for the future of Israel
Painting a hopeful future, Bennett said, “The next 50 years will be a remarkable time for the State of Israel – I draw my confidence about the future of Israel from these people,” the volunteers who rushed into danger in the South to save others.
He said, “Start-up nation... started thousands of initiatives and filled the gaps” left by institutional Israel.
“Getting helmets, designing arms very rapidly, getting food, getting people from one place to another,” he said.
“We should bring one million Jews over the next decade,” he added.
Pivoting to future technological challenges, Bennett said that within two to four years, artificial general intelligence will be achieved.
He explained the challenge as the idea that “computers are going to get smarter than people. So what are we going to need from people? What is the added value of people? What will we need in the next 50 years: people who can make stuff happen? Intelligence in itself is not action. It is one very important dimension. But we need to make change and to organize people.”
Also, he said that Israelis have “talent, being innovative, dynamic, resourceful, makeshift, and being able to change. The State of Israel generates these men and women who need to be tough... Entrepreneurship, toughness, and having a lot of kids – Israel is the only advanced nation on earth growing demographically.”
State Comptroller's comments
Earlier at the conference, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Tuesday said that he is reviewing if Iran and other hackers succeeded in penetrating the cyber defenses of the Prime Minister’s Office, the IDF’s drones, and the IDF home front command.
He said he is also reviewing 30 main public bodies to see how they handled the more intense cyberattacks on Israel during the current war.
Although he hopes the report might come out in the coming months, it could take longer due to broader disputes with the IDF about when it will provide information related to the ongoing war.
Englman said that his report, “first deals with gaps in the level of cyber protection and in the resilience of Israel, and the actions the regulatory bodies took in order to strengthen the resilience. The second examines the preparedness of critical bodies for cyberattacks and how those attacks were dealt with.”
“In addition, we are examining Protection against Cyber Threats on ICT Systems in one of our defense industries. I see great importance in these audits in light of higher risks we might be facing,” said Englman.
Further, he stated, “I intend to pay close attention to cyber protection, information technology, and to the protection of privacy, for the benefit of the citizens of Israel and the world.”
Next, he said, “Last month I entered my position as the President of EUROSAI – The European Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions. In this organization 51 State Auditors from all around Europe are members and our office is leading a parallel audit on the topic of AI, with many participants from State Audit Institutions from Europe. As part of the audit, we will examine the states’ preparedness for cyber threats in the AI era.”
Englman’s appointment to the senior international position was a rare win for Israel globally during this period when its international reputation has taken a major hit.
In addition at the conference, Israel National Cyber Directorate Chief Gaby Portnoy said that Iran has not only initiated a wave of cyberattacks against Israel, but also against “countries who are thought of as allies,” naming: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Canada, the US, the UAE, India, England, Germany, Australia, Austria, and others.
Portnoy named: Homeland Justice and Muddy Water as hacker groups associated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and named Imperial Kitten as a hacker group associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, all of which are part of wider efforts to destabilize the full list of countries he mentioned.