Thanks
for your patience, we’re back in action.
By Jonathan
Ferziger and Peter Waldman. BloombergBusinessWeek 2-2-2017
For the
full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/zzdexvp
Over the
course of 30 years working in Israeli intelligence, Shmuel Bar immersed himself
in the hermeneutics of terrorism. Using techniques of literary analysis more
familiar to Koranic scholars and Bible critics, he came to recognize the
distinctive language and religious phrases that suicide bombers used in their
farewell videos. “Victory is with the patient” appeared frequently in the
martyrdom declarations of Hamas recruits. Al-Qaeda adherents favored the call
“God, count them, kill them, and don’t leave any of them.”
Bar, a
tousle-haired 62-year-old with a wry sensibility, emerged from government
service in 2003 amid the proliferation of global terrorism, and in the rising
sense of doom he saw a business opportunity. He founded a company called
IntuView, a miner of data in the deep, dark web—a sort of Israeli version of
Palantir, the Silicon Valley security contractor. Tapping engineering talent in
Israel’s startup hub of Herzliya, he adapted 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.
Then,
two years ago, an e-mail arrived out of the blue. Someone from the upper
echelons of power in Saudi Arabia, Bar says, invited him to discuss a potential
project via Skype. The Saudis had heard about his technology and wanted his
help identifying potential terrorists. There was one catch: Bar would have to
set up a pass-through company overseas to hide IntuView’s Israeli identity. Not
a problem, he said, and he went to work ferreting out Saudi jihadis with a
software program called IntuScan, which can process 4 million Facebook and
Twitter posts a day. Later, the job expanded to include public-opinion research
on the Saudi royal family.
“It’s
not as if I went looking for this,” Bar says, still bemused by the unexpected
turn in a life spent confronting Israel’s enemies. “They came to me.”
“If
it’s a country which is not hostile to Israel that we can help, we’ll do it”
Bar says
he meets freely these days with Saudis and other Gulf Arabs at overseas
conferences and private events. 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. When a London
think tank recently disinvited Bar from speaking on a panel, explaining that a
senior Saudi official was also coming and it wasn’t possible to have them
appear together, Bar told the organizers that he and the Saudi gentleman had in
fact been planning to have lunch together at a Moroccan restaurant nearby
before walking over to the event together. “They were out-Saudi-ing the
Saudis,” he says.
Peace
hasn’t come to the Middle East. This isn’t beating swords into plowshares but a
logical coalescence of interests based on shared fears: of an Iranian bomb,
jihadi terror, popular insurgency, and an American retreat from the region.
IntuView has Israeli export licenses and the full support of its government to
help any country facing threats from Iran and militant Islamic groups. “If it’s
a country which is not hostile to Israel that we can help, we’ll do it,” Bar
says. Only Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq are off-limits.
The
Saudis and other oil-rich Arab states are only too happy to pay for the help.
“The Arab boycott?” Bar says. “It doesn’t exist.”
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