AI for War: Big Tech Empowering Israel's Crimes and Occupation

AI for War: Big Tech Empowering Israel’s Crimes and Occupation

Marwa Fatafta, a Palestinian digital rights advocate, examines how US technology companies including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir have supplied the cloud computing, machine learning and surveillance tools that the Israeli military uses in Gaza to generate targets and carry out mass surveillance. Because these firms provide the underlying infrastructure, she argues, the question of their accountability now extends to potential complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The brief centres on Project Nimbus, the $1.2 billion cloud contract with Google and Amazon, and on reporting that AI targeting systems depend on that infrastructure and that the military’s use of Microsoft Azure rose sharply after October 2023. Fatafta also discusses Microsoft’s internal review, which acknowledged misuse of some services for prohibited surveillance while leaving most contracts in place. She notes that major firms have dropped their voluntary limits on military AI, that international criminal law reaches individuals rather than corporations, and that a permissive political climate, including US sanctions on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, shields the sector.

Her recommendations include transparency over financial, research and trade ties with Israel’s military-tech sector; divestment and sanctions against complicit companies; strategic litigation drawing on the ICJ’s 2024 advisory opinion; alliances between civil society, lawyers and tech workers; and binding international regulation of military AI.

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