The Dangerous State of Facebook

At the CyberTech 2016 Conference in Tel Aviv last week, Israeli Minister of Infrastructure, Energy and Water, Yuval Steinitz, reported one of the largest cyber attacks yet had been launched against the country’s electricity system.

Not only did the attack coincide with the conference, but it also coincided with high demand for electricity resulting from unusually cold weather.

Later in the same conference, the former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin, warned about another aspect of cyber warfare when he said that, “The most dangerous nation in the Middle East acting against Israel is the State of Facebook … It has a lot more power than anybody who’s operating an armed force.”

Amos Yadlin (photo from Wikipedia)

Israel’s leaders have spoken for some while now about the anti-Semitism and incitement to violence that is circulating on social media. Thus Yadlin’s assessment corresponds with some of the latest academic studies which suggest that there has been a major shift in the exercise of power in the Middle East from top-down to bottom-up.