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project nimbus
Denials Can’t Cloud the Truth That Google Is Complicit in the Gaza Genocide
Google and Sergey Brin know their company’s technology is not neutral—it is a pillar of Israel’s machinery of destruction.
Jul 16, 2025
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.
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Dems Press Palantir on Trump-Era Contracts for 'Mega-Database' of Americans' Info
"We are concerned that Palantir's software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans' rights."
Jun 17, 2025
A group of Democratic lawmakers on Monday pressed the CEO of Palantir Technologies about the company's hundreds of millions of dollars in recent federal contracts and reporting that the big data analytics specialist is helping the government build a "mega-database" of Americans' private information in likely violation of multiple laws.
Citing New York Times reporting from late last month examining the Colorado-based tech giant's hundreds of millions of dollars in new government contracts during the second term of U.S. President Donald Trump, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) led a letter to Palantir CEO Alex Karp demanding answers regarding reports that the company "is amassing troves of data on Americans to create a government-wide, searchable 'mega-database' containing the sensitive taxpayer data of American citizens."
NEW: It looks like Palantir is helping Trump build a mega-database of Americans' private information so he can target and spy on his enemies, or anyone. @aoc.bsky.social and I are demanding answers directly from Palantir.
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— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) June 17, 2025 at 7:10 AM
The letter continues:
According to press reports, Palantir employees have reportedly been installed at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), where they are helping the agency use Palantir's software to create a "single, searchable database" of taxpayer records. The sensitive taxpayer data compiled into this Palantir database will likely be shared throughout the government regardless of whether access to this information will be related to tax administration or enforcement, which is generally a violation of federal law. Palantir's products and services were reportedly selected for this brazenly illegal project by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Several DOGE members are former Palantir employees.
The lawmakers called the prospect of Americans' data being shared across federal agencies "a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump's administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans."
"We are concerned that Palantir's software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans' rights," the letter states. "Donald Trump has personally threatened to arrest the governor of California, federalized National Guard troops without the consent of the governor for immigration raids, deployed active-duty Marines to Los Angeles against the wishes of local and state officials, condoned violence against peaceful protestors, called the independent press 'the enemy of the people,' and abused the power of the federal government in unprecedented ways to punish people and institutions he dislikes."
"Palantir's troubling assistance to the Trump administration is not limited to its work for the IRS," the letter notes, highlighting the company's role in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's mass deportation efforts and deadly U.S. and allied military operations.
The letter does not mention Palantir's involvement in Project Nimbus, a cloud computing collaboration between Israel's military and tech titans Amazon and Google targeted by the No Tech for Apartheid movement over alleged human rights violations. But the lawmakers did note that companies including IBM, Cisco, Honeywell, and others have been complicit in human rights crimes in countries including Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, China, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
The lawmakers asked Karp to provide a list of all contracts awarded to Palantir, their dollar amount, the federal agencies involved, whether the company has any "red line" regarding human rights violations, and other information.
In addition to Wyden and Ocasio-Cortez, the letter is signed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.).
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Probes Reveal Depth of Big Tech Complicity in Israel's AI-Driven Gaza Slaughter
"Many nations are looking to Israel and its use of AI in Gaza with admiration and jealousy," said one expert. "Expect to see a form of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon-backed AI in other war zones soon."
Feb 18, 2025
Several recent journalistic investigations—including one published Tuesday by The Associated Press—have deepened the understanding of how Israeli forces are using artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems sold by U.S. tech titans for the mass surveillance and killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
The AP's Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick, and Garance Burke found that Israel's use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology "skyrocketed" following Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
"This is the first confirmation we have gotten that commercial AI models are directly being used in warfare," Heidy Khlaaf, chief artificial intelligence scientist at the AI Now Institute and a former senior safety engineer at OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, told the AP. "The implications are enormous for the role of tech in enabling this type of unethical and unlawful warfare going forward."
As Biesecker, Mednick, and Burke noted:
Israel's goal after the attack that killed about 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages was to eradicate Hamas, and its military has called AI a "game changer" in yielding targets more swiftly. Since the war started, more than 50,000 people have died in Gaza and Lebanon and nearly 70% of the buildings in Gaza have been devastated, according to health ministries in Gaza and Lebanon.
According to the AP report, Israel buys advanced AI models from OpenAI and Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. While OpenAI said it has no partnership with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in early 2024 the company quietly removed language from its usage policy that prohibited military use of its technology.
The AP reporters also found that Google and Amazon provide cloud computing and AI services to the IDF via Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021. Furthermore, the IDF uses Cisco and Dell server farms or data centers. Red Hat, an independent IBM subsidiary, sells cloud computing services to the IDF. Microsoft partner Palantir Technologies also has a "strategic partnership" with Israel's military.
Google told the AP that the company is committed to creating AI "that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security."
However, Google recently removed from its Responsible AI principles a commitment to not use AI for the development of technology that could cause "overall harm," including weapons and surveillance.
The AP investigation follows a Washington Post probe published last month detailing how Google has been "directly assisting" the IDF and Israel's Ministry of Defense "despite the company's efforts to publicly distance itself from the country's national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel's government."
Google fired dozens of workers following their participation in "No Tech for Apartheid" protests against the use of the company's products and services by forces accused of genocide in Gaza.
"A Google employee warned in one document that if the company didn't quickly provide more access, the military would turn instead to Google's cloud rival Amazon, which also works with Israel's government under the Nimbus contract," wrote Gerrit De Vynck, author of the Post report.
"As recently as November 2024, by which time a year of Israeli airstrikes had turned much of Gaza to rubble, documents show Israel's military was still tapping Google for its latest AI technology," De Vynck added. "Late that month, an employee requested access to the company's Gemini AI technology for the IDF, which wanted to develop its own AI assistant to process documents and audio, according to the documents."
Previous investigations have detailed how the IDF also uses Habsora, an Israeli AI system that can automatically select airstrike targets at an exponentially faster rate than ever before.
"In the past, there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets per year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day," former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi told Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine, a joint Israeli-Palestinian publication, in 2023. Another intelligence source said that Habsora has transformed the IDF into a "mass assassination factory" in which the "emphasis is on quantity and not quality" of kills.
Compounding the crisis, in the heated hours following the October 7 attack, mid-ranking IDF officers were empowered to order attacks on not only senior Hamas commanders but any fighter in the resistance group, no matter how junior. What's more, the officers were allowed to risk up to 20 civilian lives in each strike, and up to 500 noncombatant lives per day. Days later, that limit was lifted. Officers could order any number of strikes as they believed were legal, with no limits on civilian harm.
Senior IDF commanders sometimes approved strikes they knew could kill more than 100 civilians if the target was deemed important enough. In one AI-aided airstrike targeting one senior Hamas commander, the IDF dropped multiple U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, which can level an entire city block, on the Jabalia refugee camp in October 2023. According to the U.K.-based airstrike monitor Airwars, the bombing killed at least 126 people, 68 of them children, and wounded 280 others. Hamas' Qassam Brigades said four Israeli and three international hostages were also killed in the attack.
Then there's the mass surveillance element. Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein recently wrote for Middle East Eye that "corporate behemoths are storing massive amounts of information about every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and elsewhere."
"How this data will be used, in a time of war and mass surveillance, is obvious," Loewenstein continued. "Israel is building a huge database, Chinese-state style, on every Palestinian under occupation: what they do, where they go, who they see, what they like, what they want, what they fear, and what they post online."
"Palestinians are guinea pigs—but this ideology and work doesn't stay in Palestine," he said. "Silicon Valley has taken note, and the new Trump era is heralding an ever-tighter alliance among Big Tech, Israel, and the defense sector. There's money to be made, as AI currently operates in a regulation-free zone globally."
"Think about how many other states, both democratic and dictatorial, would love to have such extensive information about every citizen, making it far easier to target critics, dissidents, and opponents," Loewenstein added. "With the
far right on the march globally—from Austria to Sweden, France to Germany, and the U.S. to Britain—Israel's ethno-nationalist model is seen as attractive and worth mimicking.
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