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How Do Israel's Tech Firms Do Business in Saudi Arabia? Very Quietly
(Bloomberg) Jonathan Ferziger and Peter Waldman - Over the course of 30 years working in Israeli intelligence, Shmuel Bar came to recognize the distinctive language and religious phrases that suicide bombers used in their farewell videos. After leaving government service in 2003, he founded a company called IntuView, a miner of data in the dark web, adapting his analyst's ear for language to custom algorithms capable of sifting through unending streams of social media messages for terrorist threats. He sold his services to police, border, and intelligence agencies across Europe and the U.S. Two years ago the Saudis contacted him, wanting his help identifying potential terrorists, on condition that he hide IntuView's Israeli identity. Not a problem, he said, and he went to work ferreting out Saudi jihadis. These days, trade and collaboration in technology and intelligence are flourishing between Israel and a host of Arab states, even if the people and companies involved rarely talk about it publicly. The volume and range of Israeli activity in at least six Gulf countries is getting hard to hide. One Israeli entrepreneur set up companies in Europe and the U.S. that installed more than $6 billion in security infrastructure for the UAE, using Israeli engineers. Other Israeli businesses are working in the Gulf, through front companies, on desalination, infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, and intelligence gathering.