According to claims by +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language news site Local Call, the Israeli army is using Amazon’s cloud service and AI tools from Microsoft and Google for military purposes due to the growing volume of data on Palestinians and Gaza.
According to an audio recording they got, Col. Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the Israeli army’s Center of Computing and Information Systems Unit, disclosed the usage of these technologies during a presentation to approximately 100 military and industry people on July 10.
The Center of Computers and Information Systems manages all data processing for the Israeli army.
Dembinsky’s presentation, the first public confirmation, revealed the army’s use of cloud storage and AI services from civilian tech firms in its continuing assault on the Gaza Strip since October 7.
Dembinsky’s teaching slides featured the Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure logos twice, emphasizing the army’s “operational cloud,” which is normally hosted on internal military systems.
Dembinsky referred to the internal cloud as a “weapons platform” that contains applications for designating bombing targets, a site for viewing live drone footage over Gaza’s skies, and firing, command, and control systems.
According to +972 Magazine, following the Israeli army’s ground invasion of Gaza in late October 2023, “the internal military systems quickly became overloaded due to the enormous number of soldiers and military personnel who were added to the platform as users, causing technical problems that threatened to slow down Israel’s military functions.”
Cloud services improve Israel’s operational effectiveness in Gaza.
Dembinsky underlined that cloud services from big technology companies provide unlimited storage without the need to physically store servers in military computer centers.
She cited the superior AI capabilities given by these firms as the most significant benefit.
Working with these enterprises has given the Israeli army “very significant operational effectiveness” in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave, she claims.
While Dembinsky did not disclose which services were purchased or how they aided the army, the Israeli army confirmed to +972 Magazine and Local Call that classified material and attack systems maintained in the internal cloud were not transferred to public clouds provided by tech companies.
However, extensive research by +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed that the Israeli army stored certain intelligence obtained from mass surveillance of the Gaza populace on servers operated by Amazon’s AWS.
The study also discovered that select cloud providers have provided several AI capabilities and services to the Israeli army since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Infinite storage capacity in Gaza
The research included sources from the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the Israeli arms sector, three cloud storage businesses, and seven Israeli intelligence officials.
According to insiders, the Israeli army employs private-sector resources to boost technology capabilities during Gaza strikes.
Three intelligence sources described the army’s relationship with Amazon as “particularly close.” AWS provided a server farm for the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate to store large-scale intelligence that assisted the army in the conflict.
According to various sources, the army’s AWS public cloud storage system provides “endless storage” for intelligence on practically “everyone” in Gaza.
Sources highlighted that the huge intelligence gathered from the surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza could not be retained alone on military servers, forcing the army to rely on cloud services provided by tech businesses.
Furthermore, the massive amount of data saved on Amazon’s cloud services helped to authenticate aerial assassination strikes in the Gaza Strip.
Increase in cloud service purchases.
In 2021, Google and Amazon inked a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government known as Project Nimbus to encourage ministries to shift their information systems to the businesses’ public cloud servers and gain improved services.
Hundreds of employees from both companies then signed an open letter advocating for a break with the Israeli army. Google fired 50 employees who took part in protests staged as a result of these calls following October 7.
Multiple security sources told +972 Magazine and Local Call that since October, the Israeli army has dramatically boosted its procurement of services from Google Cloud, Amazon’s AWS, and Microsoft Azure, with the majority of purchases from the former two companies made under the Nimbus contract.
According to sources, the Amazon system includes a “infinite store” of information that the army can use.
Amazon’s fierce rivalry against Microsoft
According to sources in the army and weapons sector, Microsoft Azure is Israel’s primary cloud provider, selling services to the Defense Ministry and army units that handle classified information.
According to one insider, Azure was meant to provide the military with cloud storage for surveillance data, but Amazon offered a better price.
According to cloud industry sources, since winning the Nimbus tender, Amazon has been aggressively vying with Azure to become the military’s top service provider.
Recently, Amazon collaborated extensively with the US, UK, and Australian security services.
This month, the Australian government announced a $1.3 billion investment to build a cloud for “top secret” intelligence data on Amazon’s servers.
While Google and Microsoft declined to comment during the probe, Amazon Web Services stated, “AWS is focused on making the benefits of our world-leading cloud technology available to all of our customers, wherever they are located.”
