Revealed: Microsoft deepened ties with Israeli military to provide tech support during Gaza war | Israel

The Israeli military’s reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology and artificial intelligence systems surged during the most intensive phase of its bombardment of Gaza, leaked documents reveal.

The files offer an inside view of how Microsoft deepened its relationship with Israel’s defence establishment after 7 October 2023, supplying the military with greater computing and storage services and striking at least $10m in deals to provide thousands of hours of technical support.

Microsoft’s deep ties with Israel’s military are revealed in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and a Hebrew-language outlet, Local Call. It is based in part on documents obtained by Drop Site News, which has published its own story.

The investigation, which also draws on interviews with sources from across Israel’s defence and intelligence establishment, sheds new light on how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) turned to major US tech companies to meet the technological demands of war.

After launching its offensive in Gaza in October 2023, the IDF faced a sudden rush in demand for storage and computing power, leading it to swiftly expand its computing infrastructure and embrace what one commander described as “the wonderful world of cloud providers”.

As a result, multiple Israeli defence sources said, the IDF has become increasingly dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google to store and analyse greater volumes of data and intelligence information for longer period.

The leaked documents, which include commercial records from Israel’s defence ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary, suggest Microsoft’s products and services, chiefly its Azure cloud computing platform, were used by units across Israel’s air, ground and naval forces, as well as its intelligence directorate.

While the IDF has used some Microsoft services for administrative purposes, such as email and file management systems, documents and interviews suggest Azure has been used to support combat and intelligence activities.

As a trusted partner of Israel’s defence ministry, Microsoft was frequently tasked with working on sensitive and highly classified projects. Its staff also worked closely with the IDF’s intelligence directorate, including its elite surveillance division, Unit 8200.

In recent years, documents show, Microsoft has also provided the Israeli military with large-scale access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 model – the engine behind ChatGPT – thanks to a partnership with the developer of the AI tools which recently changed its policies against working with military and intelligence clients.

Microsoft declined to comment on the findings of the investigation or answer questions about its work for the IDF. An IDF spokesperson said: “We won’t comment on the subject.” ​I​srael’s defence ministry also declined to comment.

The disclosures about Microsoft’s deep ties to the IDF and the integration of its systems in the war effort illustrate the growth of private-sector involvement in hi-tech warfare and the increasingly blurred distinctions between civilian and military digital infrastructure.

In the US, commercial ties between Israel’s military and big tech groups are coming under increasing scrutiny and have sparked protests among tech workers who fear products they build and maintain have enabled a war in Gaza in which Israel stands accused of grave violations of international humanitarian law.

However, in a war that has become known for the IDF’s application of novel systems on the battlefield – including AI-driven target recommendation tools such as The Gospel and Lavender – the role played by major US-headquartered tech companies to support Israel’s operations in Gaza has, until now, largely remained out of sight.

A deepening partnership

In 2021, after Microsoft failed to secure a $1.2bn deal to overhaul Israel’s public sector’s cloud computing infrastructure, its executives looked with envy at Amazon and Google, which had joined forces to win the sprawling contract, known as “Project Nimbus”.

Although undoubtedly a blow to Microsoft’s business in Israel and its place as the IDF’s premier cloud provider, documents suggest the company took comfort from indications from Israeli defence officials that it would continue to enjoy a strong partnership with the military.

Executives were hopeful the relationship would continue to grow, thanks in part to the integration of the company’s technology and services in the most complex and secretive parts of the IDF’s operations.

The leaked documents illustrate how the US tech behemoth supported a range of sensitive activities, including:

• Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, was used by multiple military intelligence units, including Unit 8200 and Unit 81, which develops cutting-edge spy technology for Israel’s intelligence community.

• A system Israeli security forces use to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, known as “Rolling Stone”, was maintained using Microsoft’s technology.

• During the Gaza offensive, Microsoft’s suite of communications and messaging systems were used by Ofek, an air force unit responsible for managing large databases of potential targets for lethal strikes known as “target banks”.

Microsoft’s staff and contractors have also worked closely with military personnel across the IDF, providing advice and technical support both remotely and on military bases.

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During the Gaza offensive, Microsoft engineers provided support to IDF intelligence units such as Unit 8200 and another secretive spy unit, Unit 9900 – which collects and analyses visual intelligence – to support their use of cloud infrastructure.

According to the files, between the start of the war in October 2023 and the end of June 2024, Israel’s defence ministry agreed to buy 19,000 hours of engineering support and consultancy services from Microsoft to assist a wide range of IDF units. The deals appear to have generated about $10m in fees for Microsoft.

‘A paradigm shift’

In a 2021 book the Guardian revealed he had authored, the head of Unit 8200 at the time forecast the IDF’s demand for cloud computing would lead it to partner with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon “in ways similar to their current relationships” with major weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin.

Two years later, as Israel embarked on a ground invasion and aerial campaign in Gaza, unprecedented in its speed and intensity, the IDF’s insatiable demand for bombs was matched by its need for greater access to cloud computing services.

This created an opportunity for Microsoft to deepen its relationship with the IDF. In November 2023, files suggest, Israel’s defence ministry turned to the company to provide rapid support to the military’s central computing unit, known as Mamram.

Responsible for the military’s tech infrastructure, Mamram has been at the forefront of the IDF’s pivot to greater reliance on commercial cloud companies. The unit’s commander told a defence industry conference in Tel Aviv last year how at the start of Israel’s ground invasion IDF systems were overwhelmed, leading the unit to purchase computing power from “the civilian world”.

In remarks revealed by +972 and Local Call, Col Racheli Dembinsky explained that the most significant advantage the cloud companies provided was their “crazy wealth of services”, including their advanced AI capabilities. Working with these companies, she said, provided the IDF with “very significant operational effectiveness” in Gaza.

Although Dembinsky did not mention the names of the cloud providers the IDF is now relying on, the Azure logo along with the logos of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud featured in her lecture slides.

According to analysis of the leaked documents, the Israeli military’s average monthly consumption of Microsoft Azure’s cloud storage facilities in the first six months of the war was 60% higher than in the four months leading up to the war.

The documents suggest the military’s consumption of Microsoft’s AI-based products also jumped in a similar period. By the end of March 2024, the military’s monthly consumption of Azure’s suite of machine learning tools was 64 times higher than in September 2023.

Precisely how the IDF used Azure’s AI-based products was not specified, but documents suggest it drew on a range of AI-powered translation and speech-to-text conversion tools.

The files also indicate that a significant proportion of the AI-based services paid for by the defence ministry were used by the military on so-called “air-gapped” systems disconnected from the internet and public networks, raising the possibility they may have been used for more sensitive tasks.

The IDF also appears to have drawn on the AI-based services from Microsoft’s rivals. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Google’s cloud division provided the IDF with access to its AI-based services.

The military’s use of OpenAI’s products such as its GPT-4 engine – a powerful AI model designed for natural language understanding and generation – also rose sharply in the first six months of the war, files suggest. Its access to the models was made via the Azure platform rather than directly through OpenAI.

At one stage in 2024, OpenAI’s tools accounted for a quarter of the military’s consumption of machine learning tools provided by Microsoft. The company has in recent years reportedly invested $13bn in OpenAI.

In January 2024, OpenAI quietly deleted its own restrictions against the use of its services for “military and warfare” activities as part of a comprehensive rewrite of its policies. At around this time, files suggest, the Israeli military’s consumption of the Azure OpenAI suite of products began to spike.

It was not clear how the military used OpenAI’s models or whether they played any role in supporting combat or intelligence activities.

Approached for comment, OpenAI did not respond to questions about its knowledge of how the Israeli military uses its products. A spokesperson for OpenAI said: “OpenAI does not have a partnership with the IDF.” They referred to OpenAI’s updated usage policy, which forbade its products being used to “develop or use weapons, injure others or destroy property”.

In May 2024, however, Microsoft began to publicise the ways in which the integration of OpenAI’s tools on its Azure platform presented a “paradigm shift” for defence and intelligence organisations, offering to “augment human capabilities” and achieve “greater speed, accuracy, and efficiency”.