Gaza War: How Did “Amazon” Contribute to the Precision of Israeli Airstrikes?

24th August 2024

3 minutes read

Gaza War: How Did "Amazon" Contribute to the Precision of Israeli Airstrikes?

A significant support is provided by the American technology giant Amazon to Israel during the Gaza war, allowing the storage of vast amounts of data about the population, some of which have been used in airstrikes.

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Colonel Rachel Dimpinski, head of the Computing and Information Systems Unit in the Israeli military—which provides data processing for the entire army—revealed in her speech at a conference titled “Information Technology for the Israeli Military,” an address obtained by the magazine “+972” and the website “Local Call,” that the Israeli military uses cloud storage and artificial intelligence services provided by major civilian tech companies in its attack on the Gaza Strip.

During Dimpinski’s presentation, the logos of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure appeared twice.

Cloud storage is a method of storing large amounts of digital data off-site, often on servers managed by a third-party company.

Dimpinski initially explained that her military unit, known as “Mamram,” already uses an internal cloud described as a “weapons platform,” including applications for target designation for bombing, a portal for displaying live footage from drones over Gaza, as well as shooting and command and control systems.

She noted that at the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza in late October 2023, the internal military systems quickly became overloaded due to the huge number of soldiers and military personnel added to the platform as users, leading to technical issues that threatened the Israeli military’s missions.

Dimpinski explained that the first attempt to solve the problem involved activating all available backup servers in the military’s storage facilities and setting up another data center, but this did not meet the army’s needs, leading them to turn to the outside, to the civilian world. The cloud services provided by major tech companies allowed the army to purchase unlimited storage and processing servers with a single click, without having to physically store the servers in the military’s data centers.

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However, the most significant advantage provided by cloud companies was their advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. She said with a smile: “We had already reached a point where our systems desperately needed this vast wealth of services, big data, and artificial intelligence.” She added that working with these companies gave the army significant operational efficiency in Gaza.

A new investigation conducted by the magazine +972 and the website Local Call revealed that the Israeli military had indeed stored some of the intelligence information collected through mass surveillance of Gaza’s residents on servers managed by Amazon Web Services. The investigation may also reveal that some cloud service providers have supplied the Israeli military units with a wealth of AI capabilities and services since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

“The Cloud Has Information on Everyone”

Defense sources confirmed that the intelligence stored on Amazon Web Services is still considered minimal in terms of practical use, compared to what is kept in the army’s internal systems. However, three sources involved in the army’s strikes stated that this information was used in several cases to provide supplementary information before airstrikes against suspected militants, some of which killed many civilians.

According to the report, the magazine +972 and the website Local Call previously revealed that the Israeli military had authorized the killing of hundreds of civilians in strikes against senior Hamas leaders at the brigade commander level and sometimes even battalion commanders. In some of these cases, Amazon‘s cloud was utilized.

Sources indicated that the system based on Amazon Web Services is particularly useful for Israeli intelligence because it can retain information about everyone, with no storage limitations. This has sometimes had operational advantages, with one intelligence source describing a truly pivotal moment in the war when the army located a prominent member of Hamas‘s military wing inside a large multi-story building filled with hundreds of refugees and patients.

The source described the use of Amazon Web Services to gather information about who was in the building. The attack was ultimately thwarted because it was not clear exactly where the prominent member was hiding, and the army feared that proceeding with it might cause more damage to Israel’s image.