New York — A bombshell report has implicated Microsoft in a sprawling surveillance operation that directly supports Israel’s military campaign against Palestinians. The tech conglomerate is under fire for building and maintaining cloud systems allegedly used by Israel’s infamous Unit 8200 to spy on and target civilians in Gaza, further entrenching its role in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza.
Since 2022, Israeli intelligence has reportedly stored over 11,500 terabytes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls, roughly 200 million hours of audio, on Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure. These calls were harvested in real time, “by the million each hour,” enabling the Israeli regime to automate threat assessments and identify so-called “targets” using artificial intelligence. Microsoft engineers reportedly helped design a customized architecture to host these operations, according to a damning exposé published by Mehr News.
According to The Guardian, Israeli and Microsoft executives held direct meetings at Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters in late 2021. The discussions included former Unit 8200 commander Yossi Sariel and CEO Satya Nadella. These talks led to the creation of a segregated Azure cloud “environment” where intercepted Palestinian communications could be stored, analyzed, and weaponized by Israeli military analysts. Microsoft played an active role in maintaining the infrastructure used to identify, detain, or assassinate civilians under the guise of “security.”
Sources also revealed that Microsoft profited handsomely from this alliance. Azure’s deployment in Israeli military operations was described internally as a “brand moment,” with the company projecting hundreds of millions in future revenue. These profits, according to critics, are blood-soaked, built on the mass suffering of Palestinians, especially during and after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which Israeli officials used as a pretext for intensifying the bombardment of Gaza.
According to The Arab News, Aslo highlighted that Microsoft’s tools were used to scan audio and text messages, flag suspicious words, and sort Palestinians into algorithmically ranked threat categories. The article condemned the collaboration as “digital apartheid,” warning that AI technologies were being used to criminalize entire families and neighborhoods, leading to indiscriminate bombings under the pretext of counter-terrorism.
Meanwhile, a joint review by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre reported that both Microsoft and OpenAI provided critical technologies enabling the transcription, translation, and surveillance analysis of Palestinian communications. These tools were reportedly operational throughout Israel’s military attacks, which have already killed more than 61,158 civilians in Gaza, most of them women and children.
According to Al Jazeera, the newly released report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese exposes a disturbing reality: at least 48 corporate actors, ranging from Microsoft and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) to Amazon, are materially aiding Israel’s campaign in Gaza, contributing to what she terms an “economy of genocide.” She asserts that these companies have become integral to Israel’s machinery of occupation and violence, providing critical infrastructure, from cloud and AI technologies to biometric surveillance, that sustains the displacement of Palestinians and Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. The report highlights how Israel’s “forever occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech,” where oversight is minimal and profiteering runs unchecked.
The revelations have reignited calls for tech accountability and international legal action. Critics argue that Microsoft’s role is not a matter of neutrality or infrastructure provision, but a direct partnership in the architecture of violence against Palestinians. As the Gaza Genocide continues unabated, the collusion between Silicon Valley giants and Israeli occupation forces appears more shameless, and deadly, than ever.
