Project Nimbus is a cloud computing contract between the Israeli government and the American technology companies Google and Amazon.[1][2][3][4]
Overview
The Israeli Finance Ministry announced in April 2021 that the contract is to provide "the government, the defense establishment, and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution."[1] Through a $1.2 billion contract, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services are used to provide Israeli government agencies with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.[5][1] Under the contract, Google and Amazon will establish local cloud sites that will "keep information within Israel's borders under strict security guidelines."[4] According to a Google spokesperson, the contract is for workloads related to "finance, healthcare, transportation, and education" and does not deal with highly sensitive or classified information.[6] However, the Israeli military and defense apparatus have been stakeholders from the inception of the contract.
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Circa 2022, the contract drew rebuke and condemnation from the companies' shareholders as well as their employees, over concerns that the project would lead to further abuses of Palestinians' human rights in the context of the ongoing occupation and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[14][15][16] Specifically, they criticized how they believed the technology could increase surveillance of Palestinians, expand data collection practices, and assist in the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.[16]
Ariel Koren, who had worked as a marketing manager for Google's educational products and was an outspoken opponent of the project, was given the ultimatum of moving to São Paulo within 17 days or losing her job.[5]
Moreover, the tech companies are contractually forbidden from denying service to any particular entities of the Israeli government, including its military.
Although Project Nimbus' specific mission has not yet been revealed, Google Cloud Platform's AI tools could give the Israeli military and security services the capability for facial detection, automated image categorization, object tracking & sentiment analysis – tools that have previously been used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for border surveillance.[1]
Project Nimbus has four planned phases: the first is purchasing and constructing the cloud infrastructure, the second is crafting government policy for moving operations onto the cloud, the third is moving operations to the cloud, and the fourth is implementing and optimizing cloud operations.[8]
The terms Israel set for the project contractually forbid Amazon and Google from halting services due to boycott pressure.[9][10] A Google spokesperson said that all Google Cloud customers must abide by its terms of service which prohibit customers from using its services to violate people's legal rights or engage in violence,[6] but internal documents from both Google and the Israeli government contradict this claim.[11] Furthermore, leaked documents from Google suggest that, even before the contract was signed, Google's lawyers were aware that Project Nimbus could be used to enable human rights violations in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.[12] According to The Guardian, the agreements also contained a mechanism for the companies to secretly alert Israel if a country requested access to the Project Nimbus data.[13]
In a letter announcing her resignation to her colleagues, Koren stated that she believed the relocation requirement was in response to her advocacy against the project.
In 2022, Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change launched a campaign called No Tech for Apartheid – also known as #NoTechForApartheid – opposing the project.[18][19] More than 200 Google workers joined a protest group named after this campaign, who argue that the relative lack of oversight for the project mean it will likely be used for Israel's war against Hamas.[6]
In March 2024, a Google Cloud software engineer was fired after a video of them shouting "I refuse to build technology that empowers genocide", in reference to Project Nimbus, at a company event went viral.[20] In April, dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at Google's New York & Sunnyvale Headquarters to protest against Google supplying cloud computing software to the Israeli government.Employees occupied the office of Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian.Nine employees were charged with trespassing and 28 were fired.[21] Further terminations brought the total of related staff cuts to 50.[22]
In April, former Google employees fired for protesting with #NoTechForApartheid, citing an article in +972 Magazine,[23] expressed concerns over Israel's current use of AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip: a program named "The Gospel" categorizes buildings as military bases, while programs called "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy" identify and falsely classify Palestinian civilians as "terrorists" and track their movements for target selection.[24]
In December 2024, a New York Times article reported that Google lawyers were worried that "Google Cloud services could be used for, or linked to, the facilitation of human rights violations, including Israeli activity in the West Bank" at least as early as four months before the Nimbus contract was signed.[25]
