The Intelligence Ministry has called for a joint strategic dialogue with the UAE and other countries in the region for using big data to be better prepared for non-military national security threats like the coronavirus.
“We and the UAE share a vision,” Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern said as he presented various Israeli advanced technologies and big data approaches to deciphering other new technologies at the World Expo in Dubai.
“It is essential that we work together to cope with mutual threats and challenges,” he said, advocating that all of the countries in attendance establish similar big data labs and then create a dialogue between these disparate labs.
Officials from the UAE, Bahrain, Singapore and the US were all in attendance.
Moreover, Stern said “the corona pandemic showed us that these kinds of threats can be even more dangerous and kill more people than military threats.”
Since 2018, the Intelligence Ministry has used its Horizon big data lab to analyze a wide variety of national security threats, including presenting many key studies and original perspectives to policymakers for handling the corona crisis.
In Knesset sessions, the ministry often provided analyses of corona infection trends in order to formulate when and to what extent the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) should be used for tracking.
In addition, the ministry regularly analyzes new emerging threats in the areas of food security, as well as environmental dangers.
Former ministry director-general Chagai Tzuriel said that other advanced countries already had larger national efforts underway to evaluate the full range of non-military national security issues and that Israel and its new regional partners needed to get moving.
Analysis of these trends is already impacting diplomatic relations at the highest levels, he said.