Al Jazeera's Michael Quaitt report on 12 May 2024
Shortly after the October 7 attack on Israel, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a statement on social media expressing sympathy for the Israelis without mentioning the Palestinians. Executives at other tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM, have also voiced their support for Israel.
Since then, they have remained largely silent as Israeli forces massacred nearly 35,000 Palestinians, including more than 14,500 children, destroyed hundreds of schools and all universities, and destroyed Palestinian homes, medical infrastructure, mosques and monuments.
To carry out this alarming level of destruction, the Israeli military is assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) programs that are designed to create targets with little to no human oversight. It's unclear to what extent foreign tech giants are directly involved in these projects, but it's safe to say that they provide much of the core infrastructure needed to build them, including advanced computer chips, software, and cloud computing.
In the midst of this AI-assisted genocide, big American tech companies are quietly continuing to do business with Israel. Intel announced a $25 billion investment to build a chip factory in Israel, while Microsoft launched a new Azure cloud region in Israel.
None of this is surprising. For decades, Silicon Valley has supported Israel's apartheid regime, providing the advanced technology and investments needed for its economic development and occupation of Palestine.
Just as they did in South Africa in the 20th century, the largest tech companies in the United States today see an opportunity to profit from Israeli apartheid. Because, this is a by-product of US-driven digital colonialism.
AI-assisted genocide
Big Tech is involved in Israeli occupation, dispossession, and abuse of Palestinians in a variety of ways. Perhaps best known for its support for Israel's pervasive surveillance of the occupied indigenous population.
In March 2021, Google signed a $1.2 billion contract with Amazon to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government and defense agencies. The two companies provide Israel with the ability to store, process, and analyze data, including facial recognition, emotion recognition, biometrics, and demographic information, in what is known as the "Nimbus Project."
The deal received a lot of mainstream media attention after Google and Amazon employees launched a "No Techno Apartheid" campaign demanding an end to their contracts. Google and Amazon anticipated this reaction and signed a contract with Israel guaranteeing the continuation of the service in the event of a boycott campaign. To date, the two companies have held their ground and continue to provide cloud computing services to Israel.
Details of Nimbus are not known to the public, but Google employees are concerned that it may be serving an AI-powered military massacre in Israel. Concerns have been heightened by reports that the Israeli army is using new artificial intelligence systems such as Lavender and Gospel to decide on targets to bomb Gaza. According to a former Israeli intelligence official, the Gospel facilitated "mass assassination factories" that "focus only on quantity, not quality."
At the same time, recent reports revealed that Google is working directly with the Israeli Ministry of Defense despite the ongoing genocide in Israel. The company has also allowed the Israeli army to use its Google Photos facial recognition service to scan the faces of Palestinians across Gaza for inclusion in its utopian "strike list."
Silicon Valley and Apartheid Surveillance
However, AI-assisted genocide is only the tip of the iceberg. For decades, U.S. tech companies and investors have quietly aided and abetted Israel's digital apartheid system. One of the most heinous examples is IBM, which was also the primary computer supplier to the apartheid regime in South Africa for the national population registration and upgraded passport system, which was used to classify people by race and enforce apartheid.
According to Who Profits, an independent research center dedicated to exposing Israel's commercial involvement in the occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land and population, "IBM designs and operates the Eitan system of the Israel Population, Immigration and Borders Agency." The personal information collected by Israel from the occupied Palestinian and Syrian people is stored in and managed by the system". The system contains information collected through the Israeli National Population Database, as well as at borders and major checkpoints.
PIBA is also part of Israel's licensing system, which requires Palestinians over the age of 16 to carry a "smart" card with their photo, address, fingerprints and other biometric information. Like the passport system under apartheid in South Africa, these cards are also permits that determine the right of Palestinians to pass through Israeli checkpoints for any purpose, including work, family reunification, religious ceremonies, or travel abroad.
Microsoft, for its part, is providing cloud computing space for the Israeli army's "Almunasseq" application, which is used to issue licenses to Palestinians in the occupied territories. In the past, Microsoft also held a stake in surveillance firm AnyVision (which has been renamed Oosto), which provides real-time facial recognition services to Israeli authorities. Other companies such as HP, Cisco, and Dell also provide technical services to the Israeli army and prison authorities.
Building Israel's technological superiority
In addition to assisting Israel's surveillance agencies, Silicon Valley provides vital support to Israel's business sector, helping it maintain and grow a high-tech, modern economy.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, for example, have all set up large cloud computing centers in Israel to provide businesses with the infrastructure critical to data-driven products and services. Intel Corporation began operations in 1974 and is the largest privately owned company in Israel.
Like hundreds of other multinational companies, Microsoft has set up its own R&D center in Israel and a chip development center in Haifa. Nvidia, the chip giant powering the AI revolution, has also announced that it will expand its already large R&D operations in Israel. The list goes on.
Venture capitalists are also crucial to the development of Israel's local tech sector, with 10% of the world's unicorns (companies worth at least $1 billion) located here, which creates 14% of jobs and generates about 20% of the country's GDP. Since 2019, $32 billion has been invested in Israeli companies, 51% of which are led or co-led by U.S. investors.
The collusion of big social media
Social media companies have also reached out to Israel's apartheid and occupation. In 2022, an external report commissioned by Meta found that Facebook's and Instagram's speech policies showed bias against Palestinians. These long-standing blatant scrutiny of the Palestinians continue to the present day.
In December, Human Rights Watch reported that Meta continued to crack down on posts on Facebook and Instagram that supported Palestinians. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed, 1,049 involved pro-Palestinian peace content that was censored or suppressed, and one pro-Israel content was removed. The company is even considering censoring the term "Zionism".
Other groups have also been accused of censoring pro-Palestinian voices, including X, YouTube, and even the Chinese-owned TikTok. Western governments, including the United States and the European Union, have been pressuring big social media companies to censor content deemed "terrorist" or pro-Palestinian content.
Big Tech's scrutiny extends beyond the average user. Political organizations such as Hamas have been banned by large social media giants. At the same time, the Israeli army, the government, and other Israeli state terrorist structures are free to release information and enjoy broad support.
Digital colonialism
It is not surprising that large US-based tech companies have partnered with and invested in Israel to support its genocide and apartheid activities.
Big Tech is the modern-day East India Company, an extension of the power of US imperialism. They have colonized the global digital economy and deepened the divide between the North and the South. As a result, the U.S. profits from ownership of digital infrastructure and knowledge and grabs resources from the Global South.
Digital colonialism is deeply embedded in Big Tech's DNA. Its close relationship with the Israeli army is not only profitable, but also serves and benefits from the broader geopolitical interests of US imperialism.
Tech companies' support for Israel exposes the false image of them championing anti-racism and human rights. In fact, they, like other institutions of US imperialism, are complicit in Israel's crimes. What we are witnessing is American-Israeli apartheid, colonial conquest, and genocide driven by American tech giants.
But just as the U.S. and other Western governments have been brought to justice for their role in the Gaza genocide, Western companies are feeling the pinch. The American tech giants are clearly responsible for everything that happens in Palestine. They are on the wrong side of history, as in apartheid South Africa. With enough pressure from the public, Big Tech's collaborators will soon get their due trial in court.