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Google and Sergey Brin know their company’s technology is not neutral—it is a pillar of Israel’s machinery of destruction.
Sergey Brin, the billionaire cofounder of Google, recently accused the United Nations of being “transparently antisemitic” because, in its exhaustively researched report, it rightly pointed out Google's complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the escalating settler violence in the West Bank.
Brin's denial of the genocide in Gaza is not only morally blind but extremely dangerous. It distracts from the real tragedy unfolding in Gaza and, by resorting to tiresome tropes, attempts to silence legitimate criticism with accusations of antisemitism.
Brin insists that calling this genocide offends Jews who have survived history’s worst crimes. But what exactly does he call it? What name does he give to the burial of entire families beneath their homes, to the deliberate starvation and dispossession of millions? A people’s past suffering does not grant them exclusive rights to define atrocity, or to deny it when others endure it. Israel, through decades of occupation and violence, has forfeited any claim to moral authority. In fact, numerous Jewish organizations and voices around the world have strongly opposed Israel’s actions in Gaza precisely because they recognize the moral imperative to speak out against atrocities, regardless of who commits them.
According to the U.N. Genocide Convention, genocide is “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” What has unfolded in Gaza meets that definition with chilling precision. Over 55,000 Palestinians are already counted among the dead—but who is left to count the bodies buried under pulverized neighborhoods, or to record the names of entire families erased in a single airstrike? This is the largest population of pediatric amputees and orphaned children in living memory.
If Google were serious about accountability, it would immediately terminate Project Nimbus and all other contracts that fuel military violence and human rights abuses.
Yet from his billionaire’s perch, Mr. Brin shrugs this catastrophe away, drawing facile parallels to his own family’s past suffering. Why is it so often those who should understand the price of dehumanization who are quickest to deny it when others are targeted? What does Brin need to see before he calls it genocide? More corpses? More pulverized infrastructure? Must every child be starved or buried under rubble before the truth becomes undeniable?
The U.N. report unequivocally lays out Google’s complicity. Through its involvement in Project Nimbus—a $1.2 billion contract awarded by Israel to Google and Amazon—the company has played an active and central role in supporting the genocide in Gaza. The project empowered the Israeli military with advanced cloud computing and artificial intelligence capabilities—tools essential for processing vast amounts of data, coordinating attacks, and executing precision strikes on densely populated civilian areas. Google is providing Israel with the instruments of genocide.
Internal documents obtained by The Washington Post confirm that Google staff directly assisted Israel’s Ministry of Defense and military after the October attacks, deliberately discarding ethical commitments that had previously restricted the company from weaponizing its AI technologies. Even more troubling, Google suppressed internal dissent by terminating employees who raised principled objections. A company that silences its workforce while publicly claiming innocence is not only duplicitous and greedy, it is also an integral part of the genocidal machinery, which Israel has refined with chilling expertise.
Brin and Google aren’t alone in this grim enterprise. The U.N. report names other corporate giants profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza. Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, and Israel Aerospace Industries have filled their ledgers by providing bombs, drones, and fighter jets that obliterate homes and hospitals. Amazon, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard have supplied surveillance tools and cloud infrastructure to track, monitor, and repress Palestinians. Even banks and insurers have invested in settlement expansion, cementing apartheid as a lucrative business model. Together, these companies have woven an economy where genocide becomes just another line item on quarterly reports, with U.S. taxpayers footing much of the bill.
Google and Sergey Brin know their company’s technology is not neutral—it is a pillar of Israel’s machinery of destruction. Denial or deflection is morally indefensible and only paves the way for more killing. If Google were serious about accountability, it would immediately terminate Project Nimbus and all other contracts that fuel military violence and human rights abuses. But we all know that will never happen. The profits are simply too good, and the cost—thousands of Palestinian lives—too little.
"Simply put," said one critic, "the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority."
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday that will overhaul the independent federal agency responsible for regulating the nation's nuclear power plants, aiming to expedite the construction of new nuclear reactors—a move that experts have warned will increase safety risks.
According to a White House statement, Trump's directives "will usher in a nuclear energy renaissance," in part by allowing Department of Energy laboratories to conduct nuclear reactor design testing, green-lighting reactor construction on federal lands, and lifting regulatory barriers "by requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue timely licensing decisions."
The Trump administration is seeking to shorten the years-long NRC process of approving new licenses for nuclear power plants and reactors to within 18 months.
"If you aren't independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident."
White House Office of Science and Technology Director Michael Kratsios said Friday that "over the last 30 years, we stopped building nuclear reactors in America—that ends now."
"We are restoring a strong American nuclear industrial base, rebuilding a secure and sovereign domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, and leading the world towards a future fueled by American nuclear energy," he added.
However, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warned that the executive orders will result in "all but nullifying" the NRC's regulatory process, "undermining the independent federal agency's ability to develop and enforce safety and security requirements for commercial nuclear facilities."
"This push by the Trump administration to usurp much of the agency's autonomy as they seek to fast-track the construction of nuclear plants will weaken critical, independent oversight of the U.S. nuclear industry and poses significant safety and security risks to the public," UCS added.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the UCS, said, "Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority."
"By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions," Lyman added. "Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come."
Friday's executive orders follow reporting earlier this month by NPR that revealed the Trump administration has tightened control over the NRC, in part by compelling the agency to send proposed reactor safety rules to the White House for review and possible editing.
Allison Macfarlane, who was nominated to head the NRC during the Obama administration, called the move "the end of independence of the agency."
"If you aren't independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident," Macfarlane warned.
On the first day of his second term, Trump also signed executive orders declaring a dubious "national energy emergency" and directing federal agencies to find ways to reduce regulatory roadblocks to "unleashing American energy," including by boosting fossil fuels and nuclear power.
The rapid advancement and adoption of artificial intelligence systems is creating a tremendous need for energy that proponents say can be met by nuclear power. The Three Mile Island nuclear plant—the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history—is being revived with funding from Microsoft, while Google parent company Alphabet, online retail giant Amazon, and Facebook owner Meta are among the competitors also investing in nuclear energy.
"Do we really want to create more radioactive waste to power the often dubious and questionable uses of AI?" Johanna Neumann, Environment America Research & Policy Center's senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, asked in December.
"Big Tech should recommit to solutions that not only work but pose less risk to our environment and health," Neumann added.
The Oregon Democrat also informed colleagues of his staff's findings that "senators have been kept in the dark about executive branch surveillance of Senate phones," in apparent violation of companies' contracts.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden shared the results of his staff's probe into major phone companies in a Wednesday letter to congressional colleagues and also publicly highlighted which carriers disclose government spying to their customers.
"An investigation by my staff revealed that until recently, senators have been kept in the dark about executive branch surveillance of Senate phones, because the three major phone carriers—AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile—failed to establish systems to notify offices about surveillance requests, as required by their Senate contracts," states the letter, published on Wyden's (D-Ore.) congressional website.
"While now rectified for Senate-funded lines, significant gaps remain, especially for the campaign and personal phones used by most senators. I urge your support for legislative changes to allow the sergeant at arms (SAA) to protect senators' phones and accounts from cyber threats, both foreign and domestic," he wrote. "I also urge you to consider switching your campaign and personal phone lines to other carriers that will provide notice of government surveillance."
Wyden noted that "while AT&T and Verizon only provide notice of surveillance of phone lines paid for by the Senate, T-Mobile has informed my staff that it will provide notice for senators' campaign or personal lines flagged as such by the SAA. Three other carriers—Google Fi Wireless, U.S. Mobile, and Cape—have policies of notifying all customers about government demands whenever they are allowed to do so. The latter two companies adopted these policies after outreach from my office."
In a Wednesday statement announcing the letter and the above chart, Wyden's office warned that "beyond members of Congress, journalists, political activists, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and other law-abiding Americans who could be targeted by the government all have reason to be concerned about secret surveillance of their communications and location data."
The findings of his staff include details relevant to every American with a cellphone, but much of Wyden's letter is focused on improving protections for lawmakers. He pointed to "two troubling incidents" that "highlight the vulnerability of Senate communications" to foreign adversaries and U.S. law enforcement: Chinese Salt Typhoon hackers and the U.S. Department of Justice, during the first Trump administration, both collected records of lawmakers and their staff.
"Executive branch surveillance poses a significant threat to the Senate's independence and the foundational principle of separation of powers," Wyden argued. "If law enforcement officials, whether at the federal, state, or even local level, can secretly obtain senators' location data or call histories, our ability to perform our constitutional duties is severely threatened."
"This kind of unchecked surveillance can chill critical oversight activities, undermine confidential communications essential for legislative deliberations, and ultimately erode the legislative branch's co-equal status," he continued. Wyden called on senators to support his proposals for the next annual appropriations bill "that would allow the SAA to protect senators' phones and accounts—whether official, campaign, or personal—against cyber threats, just as we have for executive branch employees."
The longtime privacy advocate's letter to fellow senators was first reported by Politico, which noted that T-Mobile did not immediately respond to requests for comment while spokespeople for AT&T and Verizon defended their companies.
"We are complying with our obligations to the Senate sergeant at arms," AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers said in a statement to the outlet. "We have received no legal demands regarding Senate offices under the current contract, which began last June."
Verizon spokesperson Richard Young told Politico that "we respect the senator's view that providers should give notice to senators if we receive legal process regarding their use of their personal devices, but disagree with his policy position."
Meanwhile, Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress—an advocacy group long critical of government spying on lawmakers and warrantless surveillance—said in response to the revelations from Wyden's office that "we now know that Comcast, Verizon, T-Mobile, and other phone companies have followed AT&T's unprecedented efforts to facilitate secret government surveillance of their own customers, with some even allowing the government to secretly spy on senators."
"This is a bright, red warning sign at a time when the Trump administration keeps blowing past constitutional checks on executive power and is siccing the Justice Department on elected lawmakers," Vitka added. "These companies should be shamed and ashamed until they fix this."