Tech giants are powering genocide and their complicity cannot be ignored

Read in Arabic / للقراءة بالعربية

On June 21, 2025, an Iranian missile strike targeted the Israeli cyberwarfare headquarters at the Gav Yam technology campus in Beersheba, which Israeli officials initially described in official and international media as “residential” or “civilian” areas.

The Gav Yam campus—also known as the “technology park”—hosts not only 12,000 Israeli cyberwarfare soldiers and a command center for digital surveillance and military operations, but also the offices of major U.S. tech corporations, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

The strike has laid bare the seamless integration of private tech infrastructure into Israel’s war apparatus. Far from bystanders, these companies are active partners in supplying the digital tools that underpin military targeting and control systems used against Palestinians in Gaza.
 

The role of Big Tech in Gaza's genocide

Since the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli military has relied heavily on digital targeting, AI-powered kill lists, and facial recognition technologies. These systems do not operate in a vacuum—they are built and scaled using the services of some of the world’s largest technology companies. 

Microsoft reportedly provides "Azure" cloud computing infrastructure, data analytics, and AI tools that directly support Israeli military operations. The company has also supplied key digital infrastructure used in surveillance and targeting systems deployed across Gaza. Reports indicate that Microsoft holds contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and collaborates with major defense contractors such as Elbit Systems. It also previously invested in AnyVision, an Israeli surveillance company whose facial recognition technology was used to monitor Palestinians at checkpoints in the West Bank. Internal whistleblowers have accused the company of “aiding genocide and atrocities in Palestine,” raising grave concerns about its complicity in war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law.

Amazon’s AWS division is a core part of the “Nimbus” project—a $1.2 billion contract awarded jointly to Amazon and Google in 2021. Nimbus provides Israel’s government and military with advanced cloud computing capabilities, AI tools, and data analytics. These systems have reportedly been used to support surveillance,predictive policing, and military targeting across the occupied Palestinian territories. Civil society groups have repeatedly warned that AWS services are helping entrench Israel’s apartheid system and enabling lethal force against civilians.

Google, also a partner in Project Nimbus, has developed AI tools, cloud hosting that facilitate the Israeli military’s real-time operational capabilities in Gaza. This includes systems used for data processing, facial recognition, predictive policing, and military targeting. Leaked internal documents and employee testimonies reveal that Google’s leadership actively suppressed opposition to the contract, even as workers warned these tools could enable or escalate atrocities and genocide in Gaza.

Together, these corporations have embedded themselves into the core of Israel’s militarized digital infrastructure—helping to build and maintain the tools of occupation, repression, and mass violence. Their continued operations, especially in shared military-civilian spaces like the Gav Yam tech park, reveal how tech giants are not just enabling war—they are shielding it behind their global brands.

Blurring the line between civilian and military targets

Following the June 21 strike, Israeli authorities enforced strict censorship to obscure the nature of the military facility. U.S. media outlets uncritically echoed the claim that “residential buildings” were hit—ignoring the known military use of the site. But U.S tech giants and the IDF do not share space in an apartment block. They operate together inside a fortified cyberwarfare campus—an emblem of how militarism and private profit have fused into a single architecture of violence.

These dynamics are not confined to Palestine. They reflect a growing global trend: the weaponization of technology against populations, the erosion of civil liberties, and the disappearance of clear boundaries between civil and military use of digital infrastructure.

As bombs continue to fall on Gaza, and as tech companies continue to provide the digital infrastructure for destruction, silence is complicity. These corporations are not just “doing business”—they are helping wage a war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, displaced over 80% of Gaza’s population, and obliterated every facet of civic life.

We call on Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to:

• Immediately terminate all contracts and operations that support the Israeli military and surveillance apparatus;
• Disclose all partnerships with Israeli government and defense entities, including the full scope of cloud infrastructure, AI, and data analytics services provided;
• Respect international humanitarian and human rights law, and conduct heightened due diligence on the impact of their technologies in times of genocide;
• Respond to internal employee demands for accountability and end retaliation against whistleblowers speaking out against complicity in war crimes in Palestine.

We also urge international human rights bodies and legal institutions must investigate corporate complicity in war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Civil society organizations globally must resist the normalization of war-tech partnerships, and work to dismantle the systems that enable the merging of private profit and state violence. Tech must not be a weapon of war. The complicity of Big Tech in powering genocide must be exposed and stopped.