Google made sure the Israeli military had access to its AI tools

Google has been a much bigger facilitator of tools to Israel during its war with Hamas than it has previously disclosed. A new one report from The Washington Post found that Google employees have repeatedly worked with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Defense Ministry (IDM) to expand government access to AI tools. In 2021, Google signed a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, titled Cloudalongside Amazon.

Internal documents show that Google employees have repeatedly requested greater access to the company’s AI technology on behalf of Israel – starting shortly after the October 7 attacks. An employee in Google’s cloud division said it escalated appeals from IDM for greater access Vertex. In one document, an employee warned that IDM could turn to Amazon instead, losing Google’s business. A document from November then allegedly shows the employee thanking his co-worker for assisting with the request.

Additional documents from 2024 show other requests continued until November 2024, with an employee requesting the IDF receive access to Gemini AI technology to develop its own AI assistant. The request was for a better treatment of audio and documents, but it is not clear what the first access drives were used in terms of military operations.

The news sheds new light on employee protests over Google’s cloud computing contract with the government of Israel. Google employees have spoken out against the company’s dealings with Israel since the beginning of the contract. However, the war brought renewed calls from its employees for Google to abandon Nimbus. Instead, Google has laid off more than 50 employees in order protesting the due contract to what he called “disruptive behavior.” In mid-2024, more than 100 Google employees – made up of managers and members of its human rights group – emailed the company to review the Nimbus contract, but Google ignored them.