Whether the war ends soon or not, training and maintaining top cyber defense and technology personnel for the IDF is a crucial priority.
In that light, The Jerusalem Post recently visited an IDF base in Beersheba where it trains the military’s future cyber defenders and interviewed its commander, Lt.-Col. Bar Inbar.
The base has much more of the look and atmosphere of a hi-tech start-up company than it does of an army base.
While there is still plenty of security, the attitude of the guards is more consistent with that of guards at hi-tech business offices than the gruff, no-nonsense guards you find on many IDF bases in the field.
A typical IDF base features narrow, small, and sparsely decorated hallways with low ceilings and an emphasis on functionality.
In contrast, the cyber defense training base features high ceilings, wide and spacious hallways, and various informal alcoves with creatively and aesthetically designed spots for cyber defenders to meet up and unwind during their extended office hours, which may be much longer than those of typical IDF recruits.
These cyber trainees typically work from 8 a.m. until around 9 p.m. over the course of several months of their preparatory studies.
Despite all of the niceties in these IDF offices that help attract and retain talent from the private sector, Inbar reminded the Post that “this is not hi-tech for the sake of hi-tech, only hi-tech for the sake of military purposes.”
Graduates do well in hi-tech private sector
Incidentally, graduates of Inbar’s program who entered the private sector have done quite well, with one receiving $450 million from American cloud data giant NetApp to acquire his Tel Aviv-based company, Spot, formerly known as Spotinst, and there are several other similar examples.
Inbar told the Post that 25% of his graduates go directly into IDF intelligence, 50% serve as IDF cyber defenders and in other data and communications roles within the IDF’s C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate, around 12% serve in air force technological units, and the rest are spread among the IDF General Staff, the navy, and the infantry.
Regarding IDF intelligence and the air force, Inbar said his graduates were critical in those units’ technological campaign against Iran this past June, which removed Tehran’s nuclear threat and substantially reduced other threats to Israel.
Many top Israeli defense officials have talked about the huge strategic and tactical benefits of “stand-in” attacking against Iran. This means that IDF aircraft were able to breeze back and forth through Iranian airspace as long as they wanted to, around the clock. A large part of the gains that the air force was able to achieve by using this tactic were from Inbar’s graduates.
They are the ones who are analyzing real-time data to feed new targets to air force pilots, as well as to inform the Home Front Command about its next moves and issue warnings to defend the civilian populace.
Some of his graduates also authored aspects of the computer programming that provided nationwide and localized alerts regarding Iranian ballistic missile attacks, stated Inbar.
For the Southern Command, its graduates have designed programs to better manage the assignment of medical units to rescue wounded soldiers, taking into account multiple priorities simultaneously, as well as to direct the units to the most suitable medical center within the limited travel time available.
When then-US president Joe Biden visited Israel in October 2023, it was one of Inbar’s former graduates who analyzed the trajectory of rockets fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and correctly concluded that they were responsible, not the IDF, for striking Palestinian civilians in the parking lot of Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
This vital data helped convince Biden to take Israel’s side during that controversy, which hit at a critical point in the war, and without which, Israel’s invasion of Gaza might have been blocked by Washington and other Western allies.
His graduates need to manage and protect data for the entire IDF, from field operational updates to the medical data of top commanders.
Training for cyber defenders relocated to Beersheba from central Israel in 2021-2022 to accommodate more space, with the number of spots for trainees increasing every year since then, reaching a high in 2024.
This year saw a 25% reduction in trainees due to a spike in the need for more combat soldiers following so many combat soldiers being killed or wounded, but in 2026, the numbers will have almost completely returned to the 2024 highs.
In the near future, the course will move to an even larger hi-tech style office space in Beersheba, alongside other IDF technology units.
The course is extremely hard to get into, with half a dozen different kinds of individual coding and group-work tests to get through.
While aspects of their education are group-based and homogeneous, significant aspects of their education revolve around independent learning or learning how to quickly grasp and manage new programs and technological solutions to emerging problems.
“They must always be ready to succeed on the cutting edge,” said Inbar.
Inbar is very proud of the work he has done to bring together not only your typical male Ashkenazi graduate from central Israel, but also many secular women, haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men and women, Ethiopians, and other minority groups.
Noting that there are already 52% female graduates from his courses versus male graduates, Inbar hopes to recruit more women into his cyber training courses in the future to reach closer to 60%.
He said this would make more sense, given that, at least for now, female paths to combat units are more limited than those for men.
Regarding haredim, Inbar said that some completely integrate into the wider IDF cyber and technology units, while some are being trained in self-contained haredi units.
Those who integrate learn to work with secular women, and vice versa, despite some initial cultural gaps, while those haredim who are designated to be in self-contained haredi units have a more sheltered path in the IDF (also limiting potential future command options).
For those haredim who do integrate, many have expressed to Inbar their positive recognition that secular Israelis share serious values and ethics, which they are committed to, even if these may differ in some respects from haredi attitudes.
Haredi women are generally not defined as “soldiers,” but are given a special path to serve in a civil capacity with IDF cyber defenders.
In a world where ChatGPT is increasingly replacing humans, Inbar said he is not worried that his graduates will lose their jobs, as anyone who reaches the advanced level of coding that he is teaching them will always be the leaders of future AI revolutions such as ChatGPT.
Graduates tend to serve in the IDF for between four and a half to six years, depending on the path that they select after the cyber training course.
Inbar has led the course since July 2023 and will soon conclude his tenure.