What will the world look like one year from now, and how will the corona pandemic affect the Middle East? This article presents four possible scenarios: “continuation,” in which following a temporary interruption of a few months, there is a resumption of familiar global and regional trends from the pre-corona era; “revolution,” in which there is a fundamental change in the patterns that characterized life before the crisis and the world prepares for a new illiberal world order led by China; “breakdown,” in which all global actors...
The corona crisis, which has fueled a high degree of global uncertainty and increased the chances of distorted perceptions, will likely also have an impact on Israel’s strategic environment. While the outbreak of the virus reduces the chances of military escalation anytime soon, a brainstorming session held at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) highlighted ten negative scenarios that could occur during the crisis. The outbreak itself could increase the likelihood of: a collapse of regimes and governing systems, a wave...
Itai Brun | Yoel Guzansky | Daniel Rakov | Sarah J. Feuer
The rapid pace of society’s technological innovations has created a set of transformative opportunities in the healthcare industry, notably elevating the quality of life while subsequently serving as a permeable arena for cybercriminals. The core function of healthcare is maintaining people’s well-being and, in some cases, it constitutes a meaningful portion of national economic output. Growing cybersecurity risks to the critical infrastructure sector pose a threat to national security, prompting government response. This study...
This article seeks to examine whether criminal law is equipped to deal with the phenomenon of online violence among youth. In many cases, criminal law is not the optimal way to deal with online violence; therefore, it should only be used as a last resort, while being particularly cautious, especially when violence is not the result of a “criminal” nature but rather is the nature of the internet, which leads normative minors to carry out prohibited acts. The preferred means is to deal a-priori with the phenomenon, namely, to focus on...
This article addresses Chinese projects in Sri Lanka, some of which are within the Belt and Road Initiative, in order to draw insights to be applied to the Israeli sphere. Moreover, the article will try to answer whether, and to what extent, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative “belongs to the world,” as is written on its official website,or whether this is an expression of the Chinese drive for influence that may lead to a new Chinese world order.1 The article presents the Belt and Road Initiative alongside arguments against it. It...
Since 2012, the Chinese government under Chairman Xi Jinping has taken steps to assume the role of a global power, including a sweeping modernizing of its military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in order to transform it into a force capable of projecting power. Notably, in 2015, the PLA formed the Strategic Support Force as a separate service, concentrating all of its satellite and network operations forces, including cyber operations forces, into a single, high-profile organization. This policy choice to reorganize the PLA...
This essay aims to examine conflicts in the “gray zone.” The paper is divided into three sections. The first section describes the gray zone and defines the ambiguous approach that corresponds to it. It argues that measures short of war, coercive gradualism, and deliberate obscurity are the crucial ingredients of the ambiguous approach. The second part discusses the ambiguous approach as a dependent variable, identifying the lack of power and lack of legitimacy to use force as the key drivers for adopting the ambiguous approach....
This essay presents the evolving Iranian cyber activities with the purpose of identifying patterns that presumably form the cyber strategy applied by the regime to external and internal threats. The paper initially describes Iranian cyber operations, based on information released by the Islamic Republic and reports published by cyber security firms. The work then follows with an analysis of Iranian cyber activities. The article draws the characteristics and dynamics of Iran’s cyber activities, both externally and internally,...
Social media is an effective way of influencing human society and behavior and shaping public opinion. Cyber influence operation means using cyber tools and methods in order to manipulate public opinion. Today, many countries use cyberspace, and specifically social media, to manage cyber influence operations as part of holistic information warfare. Most of these operations are done covertly and, therefore, identifying them is challenging; moreover, it is not an easy task to differentiate between legitimate or malicious influence...
Despite increasing US pressure on its allies not to install Chinese fifth generation (5G) communications infrastructure, and along with the possibility of punitive measures against those who ignore such warnings, the American campaign against the Chinese company Huawei has met with limited success. Other countries face a dilemma between acceding to the US demands to avoid installing Chinese technology in their communications infrastructure and maintaining proper economic relations with the Chinese power. While some have decided in...
Israel’s Memorandum of Understanding with the United States, which is in its second year, is the largest ever signed between the two countries. However, contracts have not yet been signed for large purchases, such as new platforms and weapons systems, due to previous commitments about purchasing in the past. At the same time, the IDF has a tremendous need for key platforms and systems sold by the United States, including fighter planes, fuel tankers, and heavy helicopters, mainly because most of those it currently has were purchased...
The Power Gap
As it enters a new decade, the State of Israel possesses impressive military, political, technological, and economic power. However, Israel is hard-pressed to translate these advantages into strategic influence and achieve its key national security objectives: mitigating threats, advancing peace, building alliances, and dictating the terms for the satisfactory conclusion of conflicts. This reality results from the limited benefit that military action can provide Israel against its main adversaries, as well as Israel’s...
