Amazon Web Services “provides Israeli military intelligence with a server farm that stores large amounts of intelligence information that helps the army in the war,” the report said.

According to reports by +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language news site Local Call, cited by Anadolu news agency, the Israeli army is using Amazon’s cloud service and artificial intelligence (AI) tools from Microsoft and Google for military purposes, given the increasing amount of data on Palestinians and Gaza.

According to an audio recording obtained by news agencies, Colonel Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the Israeli army’s Computer and Information Systems Center, disclosed the use of these technologies during a presentation to about 100 military and industry personnel on July 10.

Dembinsky “confirmed publicly for the first time that the Israeli army is using cloud storage and artificial intelligence provided by civilian technology giants in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip,” +972 Magazine reported. “In Dembinsky’s presentation slides, the logos of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure appeared twice.”

She said her army unit, known by its Hebrew acronym “Mamram,” was already using an “operations cloud” hosted on the military’s internal services, but after October 7, it became overloaded as a large number of military users were added to the platform.

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“Weapons platform”

Dembinsky described the internal cloud as a “weapons platform” that includes “applications for marking targets for bombing, a portal for displaying live footage from drones over the skies above Gaza, and fire, command and control systems,” according to the report.

“The incredible abundance of services, big data and AI – we have already reached a point where our systems really need them,” she reportedly said, adding that the services of these companies have given the military in Gaza “very significant operational effectiveness.”

While Dembinsky did not specify which services were purchased or how they helped the army, the Israeli army told +972 Magazine and Local Call that classified information and attack systems stored in the internal cloud were not transferred to the public clouds provided by the technology companies.

However, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call found that the Israeli army “has actually stored some intelligence information collected through mass surveillance of the Gaza Strip population on servers managed by Amazon’s AWS.”

The investigation – which involved sources in the Israeli military, the Israeli defense industry, three cloud storage companies and seven Israeli intelligence officials – also revealed that certain cloud providers have provided numerous AI capabilities and services to the Israeli army since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

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Citing three intelligence sources, the report says AWS “operates a server farm for Israeli military intelligence that stores masses of intelligence information that helps the army in the war.”

AWS’s capacity allows the army to have “infinite storage space” to store intelligence on virtually “everyone” in Gaza, including “billions of audio files (as opposed to just textual information or metadata).”

The report says the vast amount of information stored in Amazon’s cloud “even helped, on rare occasions, to confirm airstrikes on Gaza – strikes that would have killed or injured Palestinian civilians.”

Project Nimbus

In 2021, Google and Amazon signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government called Project Nimbus to encourage ministries to migrate their information systems to the companies’ public cloud servers and receive expanded services.

Hundreds of employees from both companies later published an open letter calling for a severance of relations with the Israeli army. After October 7, Google fired 50 employees who had participated in protests organized as part of these demands.

Multiple security sources informed +972 Magazine and Local Call that the Israeli army has significantly increased its procurement of services from Google Cloud, Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft Azure since October, with most purchases from the former two companies coming through the Nimbus contract.

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According to sources, the Amazon system contains an “infinite supply” of information available to the military.

“Advantages” of AWS

Sources in the army and arms industry said Microsoft Azure is Israel’s main cloud provider and sells services to the Defense Ministry and army units that handle classified information.

According to one source, Azure was supposed to provide the military with the cloud to store surveillance information, but Amazon offered a better price.

Sources at the cloud companies said that since Amazon won the Nimbus tender, it has been competing aggressively with Azure and aims to become the military’s leading service provider.

+972 Magazine reported that Google and Microsoft “did not respond to multiple requests for comment from their offices in Israel and the United States.”

Amazon Web Services said it was “focused on bringing the benefits of our world-leading cloud technology to all our customers, wherever they are.” The company was “committed” to keeping its employees safe, “supporting our colleagues affected by these horrific events, and working with our humanitarian aid partners to help those affected by war.”

According to the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health, 39,677 Palestinians were killed and 91,645 injured in Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, which began on October 7.

In addition, at least 11,000 people are missing and are believed to be lying dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Gaza Strip.

(Anadolu, PC)