Inside Israel's Defense Forces Unit 8200

Daily Mail​

23-06-2025

Israel has an equivalent of the United States National Security Agency that carries out cyber warfare and other types of clandestine operations, but with one notable difference: It's staffed largely by teenagers. The soldiers of Israel Defense Forces Unit 8200 - most living with their parents and working for peanuts as part of the country's compulsory military service - located the Iranian uranium enrichment sites Israel has been trying to destroy for the past week.
They produced the anti-Ayatollah video with which they interrupted Iran 's state-run news broadcast on Wednesday. And they pinpointed the Iranian leaders and nuclear scientists on Israel's hit list. A unit veteran, now in his early 30s and running an artificial intelligence start-up in Southern California , calls its 18 to 21-year-old active-duty soldiers 'the most nerdy of nerds.' 'These are the hackers, the chess players, the eggheads you knew in high school, but to the Nth degree,' he says, insisting on anonymity for fear, he claims, that 'anyone who's done intelligence in Israel isn't safe' these days, even in the US.
It is a mark of the perceived threat that the Iranian missiles that hit southern Israel Thursday morning may have been aimed at a site in the area where Unit 8200 soldiers have been working, not at the civilian hospital on which the Israeli government and Western news outlets have focused. Iranian state media said the primary target of its attack that damaged Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba was a nearby Israeli military intelligence site. Iran's Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi posted on X that Iran's military 'accurately' eliminated that site, as well as 'another vital target,' but didn't identify their locations.
Israel hasn't responded to those claims, or whether Unit 8200 soldiers were hit. Instead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday pointed to the 71 people injured at the hospital, accusing Iran of deliberately targeting civilians - even though his own military has been bombing civilian hospitals throughout Gaza since the deadly, Hamas-led terror attacks in October 2023. Unit 8200, known in Israel as Shmone Matayim, is IDF's largest unit, believed to have about 5,000 active-duty soldiers ages 18 to 21, with older veterans on reserve. Soldiers in the elite intelligence corps typically are recruited right out of high school based on the speed of their learning and ability to solve complex problems.
Many attended after-school feeder programs that trained them in computer coding and hacking, and some had private coaching to prepare for the unit's highly competitive entrance exams and interviews. Sources tell the Daily Mail that families go all out to boost their kids' chances of being among the one percent of all applicants accepted into the unit seen as a pathway to lucrative high-tech jobs. After completing their service, veterans of 8200 have gone on to found and lead information technology, artificial intelligence and cyber security startups in Israel and internationally.
Unit 8200 has its roots in codebreaking and intelligence units formed upon Israel's establishment in 1948. Those units were made up largely of native Arabic speakers born in the countries Israel was either at war with or spying on. In the early years, soldiers used primitive listening devices that are now displayed in Glilot, its headquarters north of Tel Aviv. The long hours they spent listening to Israel's enemies preserved not only their language fluency but also their familiarity with the mindsets of their country's enemies. Over the decades, the unit turned into somewhat of a tech incubator. Its culture is said to be relaxed and encourages creativity and independent thought, much like a startup.
Some of its soldiers can be recognized by their wrinkled uniforms, disheveled hair or long earrings - things frowned upon in IDF's regular rank and file. Some conservative, rural and religious Jewish Israelis complained that the unit was dominated by highly educated, atheist and liberal Tel Avivians whose views on politics and the military aren't necessarily shared throughout the country. IDF has taken steps to diversify 8200's soldiers under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition, the most far-right in Israel's history. Although its operations are classified, the unit has been reported to have launched the computer virus that disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges from 2005 to 2010, cyber-attacked Lebanon's state telecom company in 2017, and helped thwart a 2018 ISIS attack on a civilian airline traveling to the United Arab Emirates from Australia.
Subunits of 8200 are said to have been involved in the development and testing of the pagers and walkie-talkies that Israel engineered to explode in the hands of Hezbollah militants in Lebanon last September. Closer to home, the unit has been surveilling Palestinians for decades, and in 2014 was denounced by a group of reservists for what they deemed to be unethical breaches of privacy on Palestinians not involved in violence. Such criticisms have grown internationally since Israel has been at war in Gaza, where IDF uses artificial intelligence derived from the unit to target Gazans suspected of involvement with Hamas.
News investigations have revealed deadly ways inaccurate data used by the unit and faulty algorithms can go wrong. Within Israel, Unit 8200's reputation for gathering complete and accurate intelligence came under question after it failed to prevent the Hamas-led terror attacks on October 7, 2023. Those attacks killed 1,200 people across southern Israel and led to 251 others being taken hostage. They also prompted the now 20-month-long war in Gaza during which Israel has killed 55,637 Palestinians and injured 129,880, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The unit's commander resigned over criticisms that 8200's researchers had identified signs of the Hamas attack several months before it happened, but that he didn't press hard enough on Israel's most senior military and political leaders to prevent it. Defenders of the unit have countered that it shouldn't be blamed for higher-ups' inaction. The unit is based mainly in a set of nondescript office buildings near the headquarters of Mossad, Israel's spy agency, in Glilot, north of Tel Aviv. The complex was targeted by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah last fall after the notorious pager and walkie-talking attacks. Iran, for its part, has other reasons to target the unit.
Its soldiers — or at least its veterans — are believed to have taken some part in two cyberattacks on Iran in the past week, both carried out by a collective of pro-Israel hackers calling itself 'Predatory Sparrow.' On Tuesday, the group claimed to have destroyed data at Iran's state-owned Bank Sepah. And on Wednesday, it took credit for wiping out $90 million from one of Iran's largest cryptocurrency exchanges which allegedly helps the Iranian government avoid sanctions and fund its nuclear program and other secret operations. In years past, soldiers with Unit 8200 are also believed to have blocked usage of ATM and gas pumps in Iran and hacked into the nation's digital highway sign system, posting messages critical of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Persian speakers within the unit also are said to have fomented fear and paranoia among Iran's Revolutionary Guard soldiers and nuclear scientists by leveraging compromising personal information against them to squeeze out state secrets.
Iran hit the Glilot area with ballistic missiles on Tuesday morning. In a statement, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) wrote that 'Despite the presence of highly advanced defense systems,' it 'struck the Zionist regime's military intelligence center… and the center for planning terror operations and evils of the Zionist regime…' 'This center is currently burning,' the IRGC wrote later that day. It is unclear if the buildings damaged were on or off the base and whether, either before or after Tuesday's missile barrage, IDF relocated Unit 8200 soldiers 75 miles south to Beersheba near the site of Thursday's attack. 'I'm worried about those guys,' says the unit veteran in California, who has a cousin currently serving in 8200. 'They've made a ton of trouble for Iran and probably have serious targets on their backs.'