Palo Alto is one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms, and provides infrastructure protection, firewalls, and cloud security services to tens of thousands of companies internationally. Udi Mokady, CyberArk’s founder and executive chairman, is an alum of Unit 8200, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate’s elite signals intelligence division. So are the four co-founders of Wiz: the Israeli cloud computing firm recently bought by Google for $32 billion. So, too, is Palo Alto’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer Nir Zuk.

Palo Alto has expanded through a spree of high-profile acquisitions over the past decade, paying sometimes up to billions of dollars for startups aimed at expanding its cybersecurity offerings. Nearly half of these have involved companies with origins in Israeli intelligence, raising concerns about access to the vast amounts of data around the world that the company is charged with protecting. Palo Alto Networks did not respond to Drop Site’s request for comment.

As of June 2025, over 1,400 veterans of Israeli intelligence are now working in U.S. tech—with 900 of those coming from Unit 8200 alone. That number comes from a database of people who publicly identify themselves as being both former Israeli intelligence officers and holding a job in U.S. tech on their LinkedIn profiles.

  • MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    A generation ago, worked with a guy who did his IDF military service. He said that many ex-IDF were startup founders in Silicon Valley and some were bankrolled by the Israeli government when they left the service.

    I also cracked a joke about the Jews running the media and he said he’d be insulted if it wasn’t true so he wasn’t insulted.

    • Saleh@feddit.orgOP
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, the article notes that Israel is considered a major counterintelligence threat for the US and is regularly engaged in industrial espionage, with a recent example mentioned in the article.