"Google rushed to sell AI tools to Israel’s military after Hamas attack" 21 January 2025

Google employees have worked to provide Israel’s military with access to the company’s latest artificial intelligence technology from the early weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post...

The internal documents show Google directly assisting Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces, despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the country’s national security apparatus...

Google fired more than 50 employees last year after they protested the contract, known as Nimbus, over fears it could see Google technology aid military and intelligence programs that have harmed Palestinians....

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...

Spokespeople for the IDF, Google and Amazon all declined to comment for this article...

Google has been a major contractor to Israel’s government since 2021, when it, along with Amazon, was selected by Israeli officials for the multibillion-dollar Nimbus cloud computing contract aimed at making sweeping upgrades to Israeli government technology...

Google has AI policies that pledge the company will not apply the technology to uses that harm people.

Last summer, a group of more than 100 employees emailed Google managers and members of the company’s human rights team asking them to review the company’s work with the Israeli military, according to a Google employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their job. The requests were ignored, the employee said.