Israel’s genocide is being powered by Microsoft. From creating a massive digital dragnet, aiding in the production of A.I.-generated kill lists, hiring hundreds of Israeli spies to run its internal affairs, and suppressing figures opposing the slaughter, the Seattle-based tech corporation has played a key role in the violence.
by Alan Macleod
Part 2 - Turning Code Into Carnage
“Among U.S. tech firms,” the Associated Press wrote, “Microsoft has had an especially close relationship with the Israeli military.” That relationship, it notes, massively expanded after the October 7, 2023, attacks.
In the months following October 7, the IDF’s usage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service surged more than 200-fold. The amount of data from surveillance cameras, drones, checkpoints, biometric scanners, phone calls, and intercepted Palestinian personal data stored by the IDF on Microsoft servers doubled in the next nine months, reaching 13.6 petabytes by July 2024 – equivalent to 23,000 years of audio, or seven trillion pages of text.
The point of all this was to create an enormous digital dragnet, where Palestinians’ every move, word, and keystroke was recorded in monitored in the greatest and most dystopian digital dragnet ever created. In the words of Yossi Sariel, the head of Unit 8200, the IDF’s surveillance division, the plan was to “track everyone, all of the time.”
Sariel argued that big data was the solution to Israel’s problems, envisaging a future where Israel intercepted and stored “a million calls an hour” from Palestine, and used A.I. to search for keywords and identify threats.
In the months following October 7, the IDF’s usage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service surged more than 200-fold. The amount of data from surveillance cameras, drones, checkpoints, biometric scanners, phone calls, and intercepted Palestinian personal data stored by the IDF on Microsoft servers doubled in the next nine months, reaching 13.6 petabytes by July 2024 – equivalent to 23,000 years of audio, or seven trillion pages of text.
The point of all this was to create an enormous digital dragnet, where Palestinians’ every move, word, and keystroke was recorded in monitored in the greatest and most dystopian digital dragnet ever created. In the words of Yossi Sariel, the head of Unit 8200, the IDF’s surveillance division, the plan was to “track everyone, all of the time.”
Sariel argued that big data was the solution to Israel’s problems, envisaging a future where Israel intercepted and stored “a million calls an hour” from Palestine, and used A.I. to search for keywords and identify threats.
There was no way, however, that Israel could do this alone, as it did not possess the expertise or anything like the storage capacity needed for such a project. To this end, Sariel travelled to Seattle in 2021 to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, to pitch him on the surveillance partnership whereby Microsoft would build Unit 8200 a customized and segregated area within its Azure platform.
The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to transcribe, translate, and otherwise process intelligence garnered via mass surveillance, which is then linked to Israel’s A.I.-based weapons systems.
The largest and most controversial organization within the Israeli military, Unit 8200 has long been the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech spying operation. The unit is dedicated to surveillance, cyberwarfare, and online manipulation operations. Last year, it carried out the Lebanese Pager Attack, an act that wounded thousands of civilians. Unit 8200 agents were also behind many of the most infamous international spyware and hacking cases, including the Pegasus software, that was used to surveil tens of thousands of the world’s most prominent political leaders, journalists, and human rights campaigners.
The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to transcribe, translate, and otherwise process intelligence garnered via mass surveillance, which is then linked to Israel’s A.I.-based weapons systems.
The largest and most controversial organization within the Israeli military, Unit 8200 has long been the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech spying operation. The unit is dedicated to surveillance, cyberwarfare, and online manipulation operations. Last year, it carried out the Lebanese Pager Attack, an act that wounded thousands of civilians. Unit 8200 agents were also behind many of the most infamous international spyware and hacking cases, including the Pegasus software, that was used to surveil tens of thousands of the world’s most prominent political leaders, journalists, and human rights campaigners.
Sariel’s policy of mass surveillance changed the internal attitude at Unit 8200. “Suddenly the entire public was our enemy,” said one officer. The gargantuan trove of information compiled in Microsoft Azure amounted to a vast repository on the entire Palestinian population – a giant database of kompromat that is used to extort and blackmail the region’s indigenous people. If a person was secretly gay, or cheating on their spouse, for example, that information was readily available to Unit 8200 agents, who would then use it to turn their targets into informants. One former Unit 8200 member revealed that, as part of their training, they were made to memorize different Arabic slang words for “gay”, so that they could identify them in conversations.
The cloud database is also used to provide after-the-fact justification for arrests of innocent peoples. Off-hand, out-of-context comments made years ago can be used to portray anyone as a member of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or another armed resistance force.
“These people get entered into the system, and the data on them just keeps growing,” an Israeli intelligence official who served in the West Bank said.
When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, [the Azure surveillance repository] is where they find the excuse. We’re now in a situation where almost no one in the [Occupied] Territories is ‘clean,’ in terms of what intelligence has on them.
“These people get entered into the system, and the data on them just keeps growing,” an Israeli intelligence official who served in the West Bank said.
When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, [the Azure surveillance repository] is where they find the excuse. We’re now in a situation where almost no one in the [Occupied] Territories is ‘clean,’ in terms of what intelligence has on them.
Unit 8200 has also used big data to compile A.I.-generated kill lists featuring tens of thousands of people. One program gave every Gazan, even women and children, a score of between 1 and 100, based on a number of factors. If they live in the same building or are in group chats with known or suspected Hamas members, for instance, their score is increased. Once their score reached a certain threshold, all Gazans were automatically placed on a kill list that was minimally overseen by humans.
According to multiple Unit 8200 agents, Microsoft Azure’s cloud-based storage platform allowed Israel to overcome targeting bottlenecks, using all manner of data to research and identify individuals for assassination, which led to the killing of tens of thousands of people during the first weeks of its post-October 7 onslaught.
Of course, the vast majority of the deaths have been civilians – around 70% were women and children. But Israeli officials can also go back after the fact and scour their digital dragnet to justify any killing, finding connections or any other incriminating evidence. A senior Israeli military officer described the cloud technology as “a weapon in every sense of the word.” Other officials, however, have gone so far as to raise concerns that Israel’s overreliance on Microsoft as a service is a strategic vulnerability that should be corrected.
According to multiple Unit 8200 agents, Microsoft Azure’s cloud-based storage platform allowed Israel to overcome targeting bottlenecks, using all manner of data to research and identify individuals for assassination, which led to the killing of tens of thousands of people during the first weeks of its post-October 7 onslaught.
Of course, the vast majority of the deaths have been civilians – around 70% were women and children. But Israeli officials can also go back after the fact and scour their digital dragnet to justify any killing, finding connections or any other incriminating evidence. A senior Israeli military officer described the cloud technology as “a weapon in every sense of the word.” Other officials, however, have gone so far as to raise concerns that Israel’s overreliance on Microsoft as a service is a strategic vulnerability that should be corrected.
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