(José Niño, Headline USA) The recent purchase of CyberArk by Palo Alto Networks not only marks one of the year’s largest tech deals; it also highlights the growing role of Israeli military intelligence alumni in US technology firms.
According to a report by Murtaza Hussain of Dropsite News, Palo Alto Networks, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies, unveiled a landmark move this July with its $25 billion acquisition of Israeli identity security firm CyberArk.
CyberArk’s founder Udi Mokady and Palo Alto’s Chief Technology Officer Nir Zuk both served in Unit 8200, Israel’s elite military intelligence division. So did the founders of Wiz, a cloud security firm recently acquired by Google for $32 billion, as Hussain previously reported.
Over the last decade, Palo Alto Networks has aggressively expanded its reach with a string of high-profile acquisitions. Nearly half of these, including LightCyber, Dig Security, Talon Cybersecurity, SECDO, and Bridgecrew, were companies set up by Unit 8200 alumni.
Other key acquisitions such as Cyvera, Twistlock, and Puresec trace their origins to other Israeli defense intelligence units.
“These acquisitions are a way to take people from Unit 8200 in Israel, and bring them into influential positions in the US tech industry,” said Paul Biggar, head of Tech for Palestine. “These companies handle their customers’ customer data. If you are a bank, and you are using Palo Alto Networks, the data about all your customers, and their transactions, are passing through servers that are controlled by spies, or former spies.”
Unit 8200’s presence in global tech is substantial. By mid-2025, more than 1,400 Israeli intelligence veterans worked in US tech—900 from Unit 8200 alone—according to an anonymously compiled “Eagle Mission” database.
Major employers include Microsoft, which alone employs about 250 Unit 8200 veterans, as well as Nvidia, Meta, Google, Intel, and Apple. Microsoft was recently reported to have partnered with Unit 8200 to create cloud services for storing private communications of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Security professionals have expressed concerns about Israeli nationals with intelligence backgrounds holding leadership positions in prominent Silicon Valley companies. “It’s unlikely that we would let any country, even an ally, have this level of access to our most sensitive industries. It’s also important to remember that both the CIA and FBI openly rank Israel among our top counterintelligence threats, alongside Russia, China, and Iran,” said the independent researcher behind the Eagle Mission database.
Despite the unease, the relationship between Israeli intelligence and American tech has often been publicly praised by the corporate media. The Wall Street Journal lauded Unit 8200 alumni for their “high-pressure culture and on-the-spot thinking” and for founding at least five publicly traded tech companies in the United States valued around $160 billion.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
