US tech giants are offering data storage facilities to Israeli troops
Israel’s military has been using cloud services provided by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, together with novel AI tools with the help of military operations in Gaza, as stated by +972 Magazine and Local Call. These technologies have been adopted in military operations as the flow of information about Palestinians and the Gaza Strip intensifies.
Col. Racheli Dembinsky, the commander of the Israeli Army’s Center of Computing and Information Systems Unit, spoke about utilizing these technologies in an audio recording received by the news outlets. The recording approximated a July 10 meeting with around 100 members of the military and industries.
The Israeli army deals with all CSPS and CIS through the Center of Computers and Information Systems. Dembinsky’s presentation, which was the first publicly acknowledged, said that the army used cloud services and AI services from these supervisors—technological giants during the continuous attacks on Gaza since October 7.
The lecture slides Dembinsky used featured Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure logos. They also mentioned the army’s ordinary ‘operational cloud,’ commonly hosted on military-owned servers. Dembinsky referred to this internal cloud as a ‘weapons platform’ that contains applications for marking bombing targets, a Live TV feed of drone operations over Gaza, and dispatching fire control and command and control system applications.
She also pointed out that after the ground operation in the last days of October 2023 and subsequent large scopes of the Israeli army personnel and military ground forces involved in operations and using the platform, the internal military IT systems drew brief congestion issues that almost interfered with Israel’s military actions.
Israel’s military has been using cloud services provided by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, together with novel AI tools with the help of military operations in Gaza, as stated by +972 Magazine and Local Call. These technologies have been adopted in military operations as the flow of information about Palestinians and the Gaza Strip intensifies.
Col. Racheli Dembinsky, the commander of the Israeli Army’s Center of Computing and Information Systems Unit, spoke about utilizing these technologies in an audio recording received by the news outlets. The recording approximated a July 10 meeting with around 100 members of the military and industries.
The Israeli army deals with all CSPS and CIS through the Center of Computers and Information Systems. Dembinsky’s presentation, which was the first publicly acknowledged, said that the army used cloud services and AI services from these supervisors—technological giants during the continuous attacks on Gaza since October 7.
The lecture slides Dembinsky used featured Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure logos. They also mentioned the army’s ordinary ‘operational cloud,’ commonly hosted on military-owned servers. Dembinsky referred to this internal cloud as a ‘weapons platform’ that contains applications for marking bombing targets, a Live TV feed of drone operations over Gaza, and dispatching fire control and command and control system applications.
She also pointed out that after the ground operation in the last days of October 2023 and subsequent large scopes of the Israeli army personnel and military ground forces involved in operations and using the platform, the internal military IT systems drew brief congestion issues that almost interfered with Israel’s military actions.
Moreover, via the sales of cloud services, Amazon has accumulated such vast amounts of data that it assisted in confirming aerial assassination strikes in Gaza, too.
Procurement of Cloud Services
Leaders from Google and Amazon signed The “Project Nimbus” deal, worth $1.2 billion. They have entered contracts with these companies to compel ministries to migrate their information systems to their public cloud servers and acquire superior services. Many employees of both Google and pregnant tech published an open letter demanding cessation of cooperation with the Israeli army. Google fired 50 employees who took part in protests after October 7.
Security officials provided +972 Magazine and Local Call with documents and testimony of a sharp rise in the use of companies such as Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure since October, most of which were the Nimbus contracts.
Interlocutors stated that the Amazon system contains an “endless supply” of information that can be helpful to the army.
The second kind of conflict is between competitors. Amazon’s strategy exemplifies competitive conflict in its war against Microsoft.
Based on interviews with sources in the weapons industry and the army, Microsoft Azure was, for the first time, Israel’s leading cloud sales, selling services to the Defense Ministry and military divisions dealing with classified information. However, Amazon made a better bargain and, thus, acted more competitively to occupy the most significant service position in the military.
Over the past year, Amazon has been cooperating closely with the USA, Britain, and Australia security agencies.
Google and Microsoft did not respond to the complaints; however, AWS was quoted as saying, “AWS is aimed at ensuring that all its clients around the globe enjoy the features of the globally recognized cloud computing technology.
