Microsoft and Google Working Closely with Israeli Military's Computer Services Directorate for Years

By Jack Poulson – May 2, 2024

In an interview with the Israeli tech publication Tech12 in April 2023, the outgoing commander of the Israeli military’s Lotem technology unit, Omer Dagan, noted that his organization had been too early in its pursuit of an offensive analogue of OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language model, which was geared towards selecting military targets based upon natural language prompts.1 Dagan also complained that Lotem lives in the shadow of Unit 8200, a component of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman) which is often described as a smaller analogue of the U.S. National Security Agency. Translated from Hebrew to English, Brigadier General Dagan opined that: “there are two types of branding. There’s a type where you’re branded what you’re worth and there’s a type where you’re branded more than you’re worth. Lotem invented the third type, where you’re branded less than you’re worth.”

Lotem’s existence in this third category largely explains why myriad public records of the years-long relationship between Lotem soldiers and both Microsoft and Google has largely escaped journalistic attention. Formed as an umbrella organization to house the original computing unit of the Israel Defense Forces, known as Mamram, Lotem also became the home of components such as: the ‘Sigma’ branch for operationalizing commercial data analysis tools, the ‘Matzpen’ software development branch, the ‘Basmach’ school for computer science, and the ‘Shachar’ personnel and logistics unit.2 (The parent orgaization of Lotem, the Computer Services Directorate, was commanded from 2011 to 2016 by Uzi Moscovitch, whom Oracle infamously hired to lobby against Google and Amazon’s roughly $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.)

In an interview with members of Lotem from February in The Jerusalem Post, an unnamed Colonel referred to as “S” claimed that technological advances in Lotem resulting from Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza have contributed to a fundamental shift, stating: “the new speed of digital targeting had crossed a threshold where the military can now add new targets in real time faster than it disposes of old ones.” The next month, Columbia epidemiologist Les Roberts published an article in TIME Magazine with the headline “The Science Is Clear. Over 30,000 People Have Died in Gaza,” noting that the dead were “mostly women and children.”

Before ending his command of Lotem, Dagan gave the closing talk at the “IT for IDF” conference on July 18, 2022, entitled “Insights and information-based operational decision-making.” Fellow speakers included then-commanders of Mamram and its Shachar branch, Yael Grossman and Tali Caspi, as well as former Mamram commander Talya Gazit; an executive from Ness Technologies dedicated his time to the history of the “63-year-old Mamram.”3 Google Cloud’s platinum sponsorship of the event also earned a speaker slot for their customer engineer manager, Asaf Lev, who spent roughly two years as head of Unit 8200’s application infrastructure team before a thirteen year career at Oracle. Tamir Hayman, the recently retired commander of Unit 8200’s parent organization, Aman, also provided his thoughts on the essence of digital transformation.

In November of the same year, the Computer Services Directorate’s “C4I” component of the IDF’s Central Command, whose area of responsibility includes the West Bank, posted images of its soldiers attending the Google Israel Cloud Summit on November 9, 2022, describing the attendance as part of the command’s modernization.4 The English translation of the Hebrew LinkedIn post stated that: “We were at the Google Cloud conference!! Last Wednesday, representatives of the Digital Section of the [Information and Communications Technology] Division of the Central Command participated in the [Google Cloud IL Summit]. This is part of extensive work to implement new technological systems and promote digital transformation in Central Command.”

Two images of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers standing in the offices of Google Cloud Israel as part of the Google IL Cloud Summit, which took place on November 9, 2022 and was keynoted by Google Israel country manager Boaz Maoz.

Several recent posts from the same Central Command C4I LinkedIn account promoted the unit’s recent construction of a joint security database with the Israeli police in preparation for Ramadan, an Islamic month of fasting which ended on April 9. IDF spokesperson Eyal Cohen further noted the C4I unit’s role in tracking “Shabahim,” a contested Hebrew acronym for those who are “illegally present,” referring to Palestinians from the West Bank who have crossed over into Israel.5

Beyond Google’s relationship with Central Command’s C4I branch, the company’s head of public sector & defense in Israel, Shay Mor, advertised on February 29 that Google has collaborated on a project with Israel’s police. But Microsoft’s relationship with the country’s police force has been more lucrative, including through a roughly $4.2 million, three-year contract which began in January 2023.

Former Unit 8200 team lead Asaf Lev’s replacement at 2023’s IT for IDF conference, Google Cloud Israel customer engineer Laura Bouaziz, gave a talk more in line with former Lotem commander Dagan’s ‘offensive ChatGPT’, discussing potential military uses of Google’s generative artificial intelligence. Bouaziz even commemorated a photo of the talk as the header image of her LinkedIn profile. Before joining Google in early 2022, Ms. Bouaziz spent roughly four years developing machine learning systems for Israel Aerospace Industries, which The Intercept recently reported to be contractually obligated to buy cloud services through Project Nimbus, either through Google or Amazon.

One of the agenda items for the 2023 event roughly translates to: “Operation of internal computing centers, clouds and clouds alongside integration into public clouds and hybrid work as part of the Nimbus tender and evaluations for the secure cloud tender – Serious.”

Former Mamram commander Yael Grossman returned to speak at IT for IDF in 2023, albeit through her elevated role as commander of Lotem. Hayman’s analogue would be former defense minister Benjamin Gantz. Eight years earlier, Gantz gave then-commander of Lotem’s Matzpen branch Avner Ziv an award for his development of a “Crystal Ball” data fusion tool in support of Operation Protective Edge, otherwise known as the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 1500 Gazan civilians.6 Other data fusion tools developed by Matzpen were said to be too sensitive to discuss.

Laura B. — Google Cloud Israel customer engineer Laura Bouaziz speaking about potential military applications of Google’s generative artificial intelligence products at the “IT for IDF” conference on June 28, 2023, as shared through the header image of her LinkedIn profile. Other speakers at the event included former Israeli defense minister Benjamin Gantz and IDF Lotem commander Yael Grossman.

Roughly one month later, on August 2, Lotem’s LinkedIn account published an image of a packed room of IDF soldiers participating in a conference within one of Microsoft’s Israel campuses, described as being led by Lotem’s Shachar logistics unit. The title of the slide in the photo is Hebrew for “The 10 Digital Commandments,” and the second such commandment can be read as the English acronym “RTFM,” meaning “Read The Fucking Manual.”

This was said to be the third annual Lotem developers’ conference “attended by about 150 soldiers, officers and consultants from a variety of development frameworks in the army,” including “lectures and professional discourse on the topics of [Google’s] Kubernetes, [Meta’s] React, Cyber Defense, Testing, Knowledge Management, and Innovation.” The LinkedIn description further noted that: “The IDF’s digital platform is an infrastructure on the basis of which dozens of IDF systems have been established and implemented that serve IDF regular and reserve soldiers on a daily basis … and connects four public cloud providers into a common fabric.”

A developer affiliated with Lotem, Idan Fishman, noted that Google had hosted one of earlier annual developer conferences led by Lotem’s Shachar branch. And one of Lotem’s full stack developers, Liraz Ganon, recounted attending a hackathon at Microsoft’s Herzliya campus at approximately the same time as the early August 2023 incarnation at Microsoft, using the company’s Azure cloud computing platform to experiment with OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 large language model, the “LangCaine” [LangChain] LLM python library, and Azure AI Search.

Given that Mr. Fishman’s LinkedIn notes his proficiency in working with Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, it would be reasonable to hypothesize the trio as part of the four “public clouds” incorporated into the IDF’s “common fabric.” (And Oracle would be a reasonable hypothesis for the fourth.)

Roughly two weeks prior to the Microsoft developers’ conference, on Sunday, July 16, the Mamram Alumni Association hosted a conference at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev entitled: “AI & GEN AI and the IDF’s next digital campaign.” Speakers included NVIDIA Israel’s director for solutions architecture, Ofir Zamir, and the Chief Scientist of Microsoft’s Israel R&D Center, Tomer Simon, as well as Lotem commander Yael Grossman and her immediate superior, Computer Services Directorate chief Eran Niv. One month prior to the conference, Major General Niv told The Jerusalem Post that “I estimate that within a few years, every area of warfare will be based on generative AI information.”

No alternative text description for this image — Lotem commander Yael Grossman sitting to the left of Computer Services Directorate head Eran Niv at the July 16, 2023 conference at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva on “AI & GEN AI and the IDF’s next digital campaign” hosted by Mamram Alumni Association. Beyond Grossman and Niv, speakers included the Chief Scientist of Microsoft’s Israel R&D Center, Tomer Simon, and the Director of Solutions Architecture for NVIDIA Israel, Ofir Zamir.

Google working with the Computer Services Directorate’s Lotem unit and the related “C4I” components of the IDF’s regional commands, rather than directly with more sensitive organizations such as Unit 8200, roughly comports with the spirit of the company’s longstanding assertion that “[Google’s] work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

A former commander of Lotem’s “Sigma” branch for adapting commercial data analysis products towards military operational needs, Nurit Cohen Inger, has since retired from military service and become both a mentor for Google for Startups and a vice president at the Israeli “trust and safety” company ActiveFence. While her subsequent role as a technology executive was not mentioned, statements made by Ms. Cohen Inger during her time leading Sigma were quoted within a November column published by The LA Times regarding the role U.S. technology companies have played in the ongoing bombing of Gaza.

(Left) Lt. Col. Nurit Cohen Inger in uniform as commander of the “Sigma” commercial technology adoption branch of the Israel Defense Forces’ Lotem technology unit, and (Right) Cohen Inger as a mentor for Google for Startups while working as vice president of the “trust and safety” company ActiveFence. Credit: The left photo was published by the IDF, while the right photo was published by Cohen Inger via LinkedIn.

Due to high-profile article from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius largely crediting American data fusion giant Palantir with Ukraine’s initial success against the February 2022 Russian invasion, the company was widely hypothesized to be playing a similar role supporting the targeting systems of Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza. This perception was amplified as a result of Palantir holding a high-profile board meeting in Tel Aviv in early January, followed by the announcement of a strategic partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

But the Israeli news website Globes reported in late January that, while Palantir had signed a deal with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and was providing support in logistical and personnel domains, Aman’s Unit 8200 and the Prime Minister’s Shin Bet domestic security service had passed on the company. Nevertheless, The Nation would report last month that Palantir was feeding Israel’s targeting systems, seemingly ignoring Aman allegedly rejecting the company despite the broader defense establishment’s embrace.

The Billion Dollar Deal that Made Google and Amazon Partners in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine

Ms. Bouaziz, Google Cloud Israel’s representative at the 2023 ‘IT for IDF’ conference, promoted the Hebrew language support of Google’s ‘Gemini’ large language model as part of an interview with People and Computers in February, recommending that companies experiment with Gemini through Google’s Vertex AI platform. Roughly two years ago, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian — a former Oracle executive — announced Vertex AI’s integration with Palantir. And one of the rare LinkedIn posts of Google’s closest partners in Israel, former Unit 9900 visual intelligence commander and National Cyber Directorate head Gaby Portnoy, was a promotion of Palantir’s Tel Aviv board meeting.

Roughly 50 Google workers were fired during the last two weeks in response to their protests of Google’s support for the Israeli military during what many governments and human rights organizations have labeled an ongoing genocide. On Tuesday, dozens of the workers filed a complaint through the National Labor Relations Board alleging a violation of their “protected concerted activity,” while the founder of Google Israel R&D, Yossi Matias, has reportedly been promoted to chief of the entirety of Google Research.

(Substack)

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