Google reportedly worked directly with Israel’s military on AI tools
According to corporate records the Washington Post was able to get, Google collaborated with the Israeli military immediately following its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in an attempt to outbid Amazon for AI services.
Despite Google’s claims to its own employees and the public that it only worked with civilian government ministries, the documents reveal that in the weeks after Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel, employees at the company’s cloud division worked directly with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
According to the Post, a Google cloud division employee intensified the IDF military’s requests for access to Google’s AI technology a few weeks after the battle started. Another paper contained a warning from an employee that if Google did not promptly address the military’s requests, Israel would have to rely on Amazon to meet its cloud computing requirements. An employee expresses gratitude to a colleague for managing the IDF’s request in a paper dated November 2025. A few months later, staff members asked for more IDF access to AI tools.
Google was disciplining staff members for opposing Project Nimbus, Israel’s $1.2 billion deal for Google and Amazon’s cloud computing services, during this time. Twenty-eight Google employees were let go after staging sit-in protests at the company’s California and New York offices.
Google denied collaborating with the Israeli military at the same time. In April 2024, Anna Kowalczyk, Google Cloud’s external communications manager, told The Verge, “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.” “This work is not intended for military or intelligence services-related, highly sensitive, or classified workloads,” Kowalczyk stated.
A request for comment from The Verge was not immediately answered by Google.
