Google rushed to sell Israeli military new AI tools after October 7: Report
The Washington Post is reporting that Google rushed to provide its latest artificial intelligence tools to the Israeli military after the Hamas-led attacks, despite protests from staff concerned that Israel was using the technology in mass killings of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Citing internal documents, the Post says Google worked directly with Israel’s Ministry of Defence and the Israeli army while publicly distancing itself from the country’s national security apparatus amid the staff protests.
The documents indicate that the Israeli Defence Ministry, in the weeks after October 7, urgently wanted to expand its use of a Google service called Vertex, which clients can use to apply AI algorithms to their own data, the Post reported.
But the documents do not indicate how the ministry planned to use the technology or how it might have contributed to military operations, it said.
And in November of last year, the documents show that a Google employee requested access to the company’s Gemini AI technology for the Israeli military, which wanted to develop its own AI assistant to process documents and audio, it said.
The report comes as human rights groups and tech experts express alarm at Israel’s use of AI tools, including a system known as Lavender, to generate lengthy lists of Palestinians as potential bombing targets.
Together with Amazon, Google entered into a $1.2bn contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud storage, AI and other technology, known as Project Nimbus, in 2021.
Google fired about 50 employees last year, after they protested the contracts, according to the No Tech For Apartheid group.
According to The Washington Post, Google’s rush to provide new AI tools to Israel was in part to compete with Amazon.
The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns Amazon.
Google fired about 50 employees in 2024 over protests against Project Nimbus
Swiss prosecutors examine ‘criminal complaints’ against visiting Israeli president
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland said it is looking into “several criminal complaints” against Isaac Herzog, who is attending the World Economic Forum at the Swiss resort of Davos this week, according to the AFP news agency.
The office told AFP the complaints were “being examined in accordance with the usual procedure” and that it was in contact with the country’s foreign ministry “to examine the question of the immunity of the person concerned”.
The office didn’t provide any details on the specific complaints filed but the Swiss Keystone-ATS news agency reported that one of the complaints came from an NGO called Legal Action Against Genocide “for incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity”.
The complaint claimed Herzog had played “an active role in the ideological justification of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, by erasing all distinction between the civilian population and combatants”.
AFP reported that Herzog spoke at Davos on Tuesday and held meetings on Wednesday morning but it was unclear if he was still in Switzerland.
The agency, citing Keystone-ATS, said complaints were also filed against the Israeli president when he attended the Davos meeting a year ago but said the Swiss Attorney General refrained from opening an investigation that time.
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