Microsoft is under scrutiny due to its alleged support of the Israeli military via its cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) services after the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, says an Anadolu Agency report.
Senior Microsoft employees protested the company’s services to Israel at its 50th anniversary party, which brought back to the table the company’s involvement with Israel.
The Guardian reported in January that Microsoft provided more IT and storage services to the Israeli military after the Oct. 7 attacks and signed multi-million dollar deals to provide thousands of hours of technical support.
The Israeli military became increasingly dependent on companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to store and process large data.
The Associated Press (AP), in a report, said that the Israeli military is leveraging Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure to compile data collected through mass surveillance, as well as transcribed and translated messages through calls, texts and audio transmissions.
Microsoft’s Azure platform is used to search for keywords among the large, collected data, according to an official cited by the AP.
The Israeli military use of AI with OpenAI and Microsoft increased nearly 200 times in March last year compared to the period before the Oct. 7 attack. The Israeli army’s data on Microsoft servers doubled in March-July 2024 to more than 13.6 petabytes, while its use of the servers increased by almost two-thirds in just two months after the attack.
“This is the first confirmation we have gotten that commercial AI models are directly being used in warfare,” said Heidy Khlaaf, former senior safety engineer at OpenAI, according to AP on Feb. 18.
The Washington Post reported last month that Google’s cloud department has been working with the Israeli military in the immediate aftermath of Tel Aviv’s attacks on Gaza.
A Google employee warned the firm to urgently meet the Israeli military’s requests so that Israel does not turn to Amazon for cloud services, according to the Washington Post. An employee thanked a colleague for completing a task that was commissioned by the Israeli military in another document that was released, which dates to Nov. 2023.
Months later, another released message showed that an employee requested additional access to AI tools for the Israeli military’s needs.
