Publications

How Cybercriminal Infrastructure is Reshaping Authoritarian Operations Against Democracies

The State Comptroller’s latest report not only exposes deficiencies regarding foreign interference in Israeli elections, but also a deeper failure—a conceptual failure—that Israel must rectify ahead of the upcoming elections

Artificial intelligence is now integrated into the core of defense, intelligence, and economic operations, but its reliability depends entirely on the integrity of the data from which it learns. A new memorandum by Dr. Shay Hershkovitz examines one of the most significant vulnerabilities in the AI era: “data poisoning”—the covert and intentional manipulation of datasets or models. The memorandum demonstrates how this threat goes beyond a technical cyber problem and constitutes a profound strategic and cognitive threat. Adversaries can exploit these vulnerabilities to embed “dormant poisoning,” which remains inactive during routine operations but distorts decision-making processes in moments of crisis. The memorandum analyzes the dimensions of this asymmetric threat and presents a series of strategic recommendations for building national and institutional resilience against this challenge.