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Persistent Aggrandizement? Israel's Cyber Defense Architecture

Elena Chachko
Monday, August 31, 2020, 4:23 PM

The Israeli equivalent to Defend Forward is far less regulated than its U.S. parallel, and that the Israeli version of Persistent Engagement at home allows domestic action and harnesses the private sector in ways that the U.S. approach does not contemplate.

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Since 2011, the Israeli government has worked to centralize and streamline cyber defense authorities and responsibilities. It has established a new civilian national security agency to oversee cybersecurity preparedness and monitor and respond to cyber threats. The government has also advanced comprehensive draft legislation in broad consultation with a variety of relevant stakeholders from the private sector and civil society to regulate the authorities and operations of that new agency.

This paper compares the Israeli cyber defense architecture and recent reforms with key concepts in current U.S. strategy: Defend Forward and Persistent Engagement. It finds that the Israeli equivalent to Defend Forward is far less regulated than its U.S. parallel, and that the Israeli version of Persistent Engagement at home allows domestic action and harnesses the private sector in ways that the U.S. approach does not contemplate. The paper also briefly evaluates the Israeli reforms. It argues that the reforms are best described as persistent government aggrandizement, at the expense of the private sector and civil liberties.

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Elena Chachko

Elena Chachko

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Elena Chachko is the inaugural Rappaport Fellow at Harvard Law School. She is also an academic fellow at the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at Berkeley Law School. Elena’s scholarship at the intersection of administrative law, foreign relations law, national security law and international law has been published or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Stanford Technology Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Law, and the American Journal of International Law Unbound, among other publications. It has won several awards, including the 2020 Mike Lewis Prize for national security law scholarship, the Harvard Law School Irving Oberman constitutional law writing prize, and the Harvard Law School Mancini writing prize. Elena previously held fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, and the Harvard Weatherhead Center. She received her doctoral degree from Harvard Law School. Prior to her doctoral studies, Elena clerked for Chief Justice Asher D. Grunis on the Supreme Court of Israel. She has also worked at the United Nations Office of Counterterrorism and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she focused on arms control and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

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