Tech Giants Support Israeli Military in Genocide with AI and Cloud Services.
The biggest technology companies in the world now see an opportunity to make money from Israeli apartheid which is a consequence of digital colonialism led by the US. An investigation has disclosed that the Israeli Army is employing Amazon’s cloud service to keep surveillance data on Palestinians, while also acquiring additional AI capabilities for military use from Google and Microsoft.
This comes after the statement of Col. Racheli Dembinsky, the commander of the Israel’s Army Center of Computing and Information Systems Unit, in which she was seen to make the first public acknowledgement that the Israeli Army is using artificial intelligence and cloud storage capabilities from private tech companies to support its ongoing operations against the Gaza Strip.
In simple words, cloud storage allows the users to store data on remote servers with the help of an internet connection. The third-party provider that looks after the servers is in charge of hosting, regulating, and protecting the data kept on its infrastructure.
Israeli Army used “operational cloud” rather than the public clouds managed by private businesses as mentioned by Dembinsky. This internal cloud, which comprises fire, command, and control systems, a site for watching live imagery from UAV’s over Gaza and applications for designating targets for airstrike, is what she called a “weapons platform.”
“The crazy wealth of services, big data and AI- we have already reached a point where our systems really need it,” marked Dembinsky. According to her, the most important advantage that these cloud companies provide is their innovative and revolutionary artificial intelligence capabilities. This can be said to be an AI assisted genocide.
According to a report published by Al-Jazeera, Intel has recently announced a $25 billion investment in an Israeli chip facility. Moreover, Microsoft has opened a new Azure cloud region in Israel. In addition to this, a $1.2 billion agreement for cloud computing services was signed by Google and Amazon in March 2021 on behalf of the Israeli government and defense establishment. Under Project Nimbus, the two businesses give Israel the ability to store, process, and analyze data including biometrics, facial recognition, emotion detection and demographic data. The involvement of Israel in the employment of cloud services has been acknowledged by Amnesty International as well.
Matt Mahmoudi, a researcher at Amnesty International working on tech issues said, “If tech companies, including Google and Amazon, are engaged in business activities that could impact Palestinians in Gaza, or indeed Palestinians living under apartheid in general, they must abide by their responsibility to carry out heightened human rights due diligence along the entirety of the lifecycle of their products. This must include how they plan to prevent, mitigate, and provide redress for possible human rights violation, particularly in light of mandatory relationships with weapons manufacturers, which contribute to risk of genocide.”
The Israeli military’s increasing adoption of modern cloud and artificial intelligence technologies highlights the serious moral and humanitarian issues associated with their deployment in combat areas.
Global tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have an obligation to thoroughly evaluate and handle the human rights consequences of their corporate operations when they extend their services into regions of political unrest.
The recent revelations of Israel’s Army’s dependence on these technologies emphasizes the pressing need for increased accountability and transparency in the tech sector’s operations. These companies must fulfil their ethical obligations and make sure that their technology does not encourage or support violence.