Just coincidence? Israel's drones hacked, and signing new deal with the US

[Skybird]

I got reported that Israel and the Us have agreed a new ten year deal for American military aid worth - says the rumour - around 38 billion dollars. That would be 8 billion more than the deal for the last ten year interval that runs out 2018, and had a volume of around 30 billion dollar.

But the Snowden documents also revealed recently that American and British intel hacked Israel drones in the years 2008 to 2012, in order to get early warnings on possible Israeli drone atacks against Iran, and Israeli operations over Gaza, and to have these drones "leak" their data to the Americans and British. Combat planes also were penetrated by the anglosaxon cyberattacks.

There is a hook in that new military aid deal, and I am stunned and can only wonder why Israel has accepted this hook. It accepted that from now on it shall no longer develop own military systems and platform, instead must buy all it needs from the Americans.

For a nation that since decades is so uncompromised about not giving away responsibility for its own security to other, foreign factions, and that is the biggest drone exporter in the world and is in the global elite of drone design and development, this is a surprising acceptance, to put it mildly.

I wonder what is going on. It seems to me Obama did not like the Israeli resoluteness towards Iran, and probably more or less blackmailed Israel somehow to give up maintaining the competence of developing military key technology that finds the NSA difficult to hack into in order to control Israel and interfering with them if they do something that America does not want them to do, Israel was demanded to play ball, else - well, whatever the alternative has been. Cutting the aid, maybe.

One must also wonder whether Israel even intends to play by this rule. If i were Israel, I certainly would not. This deal has "HANDLE WITH CARE - CONTENT SELF-DAMAGING" written all across it.

Obama and Netanjahu cannot stand each other, and American policy towards Iran, also Syria, is a mess, like practically all of US foreign policy in the ME. The latest Snowden documents telling Israel that their supposed closest ally hacked into their data life stream from drones operating over Gaza, and worse: over Iran, will not have been taken with smiling faces in Jerusalem. When the NSA can hack into the life data footage, it also may be able to interfere and spoil running Israeli operations with these platforms, or warn the other side - and that cannot be considered as somethign that lets Israel sleep unworried.

Obama was a nightmare for Israel, with both Clinton or Trump things will become even worse. That Obama forced Israel to excuse themselves to the Turks for the Turkish aggression during that blockade runnign incident, and has put questionable deals with Turkey and Iran before the worries of Israel, has not been forgotten. And the EU is no friend of Israel either. European socialists - and that is the overwhelming majority here - despise Israel, just do not say it loud.

Its getting even more lonely around Israel, and that really is difficult and treason must be feared even from the last remaining former "friends". I know there is a lot of talking about "friends" and how close the nations are. That is pathetic blabla for the masses only. In the end the US has prepared to dangerously weaken its vital interests and responsibilities in the region, also at the cost of Israeli interests, and it more and more uses Israel'S dependency to force Jerusalem to give ground to the new and quite naive rules of the changed ball game. This pressure on Israel to fall back in the face of Palestinian pressure without Palestinians needing to deliver anything, and to allow Iran building nuclear weapons, and triggering a nuclear arms race - which de facto is already under way - can be expected to grow in coming years. And the EU will try its share as well to make the Israelis comply with their demands by putting pressure on trade.

This "deal" also will make it more difficult for Israel to maintain military cooperations in developing and trading with other countries. I especially think of India, but also European countries.

What I expect to see in reaction from Israel? A reaction that is not to be seen, and is kept away from American monitoring as best as possible. Because I do not believe they will obey these limits in that deal. They would be suicidally mad if they would.

P.S. The coincidence in the headline relates to the close points of time of the new publishing of the Snowden documents, and the signing of the deal. The actual hacking of the drones took place already years ago, 2008-2012.

[Oberon]

Israel has a pretty good armaments industry and a science industry that is not to be sniffed at...but it's not the military-industrial complex that is the United States of America, and a lot of the stuff that Israel has developed has its origins in American developed equipment and in some cases vice-versa, the US is a pretty good customer for Israeli arms equipment, things like the Osprey, Bradley IFV and F-16 contain a not insignificant amount of Israeli created electronic equipment. Elbit is the name of the company, and IIRC they have a contract with the UK to create a drone control and operation system. So if there's any desire for backdoor systems, Elbit will be dropping them in there.
Besides, I imagine the Israelis will be wanting to intergrate Iron Dome with a gun based C-RAM system (like MANTIS) to provide maximum protection from any objects launched from the West Bank or Gaza, aaaand...well, there's also a need to stockpile up the missiles used by Iron Dome since the last time it ran during an extensive launch period it ran out of missiles.

Israel isn't stupid, I mean they have MOSSAD for goodness sake and those guys have a reputation. You can bet that for every time we've spied on them, they have spied on us, they have the capabilities and the desire, and they also have the ability to keep it a secret better than the west can.
In fact, there is history for it, history in Germany too. The freighter 'Scheersberg A', did they ever find it? And in the 1990s who did the head of the BfV warn his department chiefs about being the prime threat for stealing German computer secrets (hint: It wasn't the PLO).
It's all part of the game, there are no friends in international espionage, just areas where interests overlap. If you were to shirk away from every nation just because they had spied on you...well, you'd probably be like North Korea. The only thing you can do is improve your counter-espionage and spy twice as hard on them to try and find something juicy to use. Tit for tat.

[Von Due]

As for the espionage bit, Oberon puts it well. I'll just add: A nation that isn't spying on every other nation is not doing its job.

The US spies on all countries. The UK spies on all countries, Israel, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Ghana, Chile, Germany, Poland, Norway, the Vatican, you name them, they all spy.

There are no innocent nations with a possible exception in some obscure mid-pacific island nations and suchlike.

When it comes to information gathering, pretty much anything goes, friends spy on friends and enemies alike, just don't publicly announce it.

As for that deal, from what I've gathered so far, the US will send mucho dollar to Israel on the condition that the money is spent on the US defence industry and not Israeli industries. That is very different from a condition that Israel can't buy anything weaponlike from their domestic industries. It seems to me at first glance that this deal is a way to arm Israel while pouring Govt money into US weapons industry. The conspiracy theorists can have a field day on this one: Who approached the Congress suggesting those dollars should all go to US industries?

[Skybird]

This is not just espionage, this is about cappng the Israeli defence industry, and it is about other countries maybe being able to interfere with and interrupt ongoing military operations by Israel. If you can break into the datastreaming of a platform in operation in real time, hack encryption, that is, you probably also can influence that platform, and at least you gain knowledge about what the Israelis actually, in real time, are doing, allowing you to react - again, in real time. This is more than classical espionage. It compares to being able to push a shooter or fall into his arm to force him making his shot miss.

And then this basic concern, always, of course: who watches the watchers? The American intel network is a state within the state. An no, I do not beleive at all that a government really has full control over it. Governments come and go. The intel infrastructure stays. This fact alone is against any belief that the government is in full control. Laws may say different, but paper is patient, and ink has no mind of its own.

Germany plans to buy Israeli drones. Our defence ministress immediately said that the german drones will be made invulnerable to foreign hacking. What a relief! LOL The cellphones used by members of govenrment, also are non-hackable. Since 12 years. Oh, and they are made in the USA.

[Jimbuna]

"Keep Your Friends Close, But Your Enemies Closer"

[Platapus]

We trust our allies because we monitor them.

Not saying that Israel is our ally. Just making a general observation on how countries run their intelligence services.