Tech Terrorism

by Micki Luckey 
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Microsoft has been a major partner in the genocide in Palestine, confirmed by documents leaked on January 23 that show it stepped up its supply of cloud support and AI for the Israeli military.

U.S. tech’s support for Israel is nothing new. But a new application of tech came to public attention on September 17 last year with the simultaneous explosion of thousands of pagers owned by Hezbollah fighters. They and the explosions in hand-held radios the next day were targeted by Israeli intelligence to decapitate Hezbollah, the only organized force that had defeated them in battle. Deployment of exploding personal communication devices can only be described as an act of terrorism.

AI generated photograph of a pager surrounded by flaming debris.

The Pager Attacks

It is hard to imagine the brutality of exploding devices held near the face, with over 3000 injured and 37 killed, many civilians — even children. According to Amnesty International, “the attacks were carried out indiscriminately, would be unlawful under international humanitarian law and should be investigated as war crimes… International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks — meaning attacks that fail to distinguish between civilians and military targets.”

The frightening news that Israel targeted Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies was shocking. But the way the western media described it as “highly innovative” (NY Times), “sophisticated” and “audacious” made it more horrifying. A Conservative Party politician in Britain reacted to the news with morbid enthusiasm, “Let’s just look at 1,500 exploding pagers and look on with awe, at how little that cost and how effective that was.” And later the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, citing the need to take down internet trolls, said “We need the kind of genius that manufactured Apollo Gold Pagers and infiltrated Hezbollah for over a decade to prepare for this battle. This is the kind of ingenuity and inventiveness that have always been a hallmark of the State of Israel, that have always been a characteristic of the Jewish people. I know we can do it.”

The Israeli state was not the first to use booby-trapped devices. According to the U.S. Department of the Army, earlier uses go back to WWII, eventually leading to a 1996 Amended Protocol outlawing them, a protocol that Israel signed. While an occasional story did characterize the pager attack as terrorism, too many reports in the mainstream media failed to point out that once again, Israel was flagrantly ignoring international law.

Hezbollah, the target

Aligned with Iran as part of the Axis of Resistance, Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim organization in Lebanon. For over four decades the organization has participated in social programs and government, while its militant wing carried out a variety of attacks mostly on Israeli and US military targets. By repeatedly fending off Israeli incursions, Hezbollah became the main Lebanese defensive force and twice forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territory, in 2000 and 2006.

Immediately after October 7, 2023, Hezbollah pledged support for the Palestinian resistance and engaged the Israeli army with rocket skirmishes and ground fights. In September 2024, Israel assassinated the head of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive bombardment of Beirut. After the pager attacks killed some of the other top leaders — along with many civilians– Israel bombed multiple sites in Lebanon and was able to again claim territory in the south of the country.

Role of tech

With extensive use of Artificial-Intelligence (AI)-guided bombs, the Israeli assault on Gaza has been called the “first AI-powered genocide” by Mohammed Khatami, a former Google software engineer. The pager explosions took it to a new level and involved tech companies from at least two other countries. Yet the Israeli military and intelligence forces have long been known for their advanced surveillance techniques. Their long reach was demonstrated by the direct missile targeting of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, in his room at a Tehran guesthouse just hours after he attended the swearing-in of Iran’s new president last August. Israel uses facial recognition to constantly monitor Palestinian’s every move throughout the Middle East.

Tech giants maintain close ties with Israel. Cloud services from Microsoft, Amazon and Google have enabled the Israeli military to manage the huge amount of data generated from its overwhelming and almost nonstop attacks on Gaza. The Israeli government spent over $1 billion to improve its infrastructure with Project Nimbus, a cloud computing program developed in partnership with Google and Amazon. The partnership was designed for civilian projects, but in 2023 a contract between Google and the Israeli Defense Ministry exposed its use by the military. In spite of Google’s pledge that the company will not use its technology to harm people, throughout 2024 Google provided the Israel Defense Ministry access to its updated AI technology to process surveillance imagery rapidly for target selection in Gaza.

Microsoft personnel “work closely with units in the Israeli army to develop products and systems”, which in recent months has made heavy use of its cloud computing platform Azure. In addition to enabling the Israeli military to manage their unceasing bombardments of Gaza, the company encourages employee donations to illegal settlements and co-sponsors tech conferences that expound the uses of its AI.

Tech workers push back

Even before the war on Gaza, the use of this technology by the Israeli military led workers at the tech companies to condemn it. Then as the numbers killed in Gaza began to soar into the thousands, Google workers protested with sit-ins at offices in both New York and Sunnyvale, California. Twenty-eight employees were fired for participating in the sit-ins, and eventually 22 others lost their jobs at Google. The protests were organized by a group called No Tech For Apartheid, which organizes tech workers upset at working for a company that facilitates genocide. Apparently the organization has had some effect: in 2024 Google pulled out of a tech conference called “IT for IDF” that it had sponsored the past two years.

Microsoft employees also held a protest at company headquarters in Redmond, WA, calling for an end to partnerships with the Israeli military and government. Microsoft fired the two organizers, who belong to No Azure for Apartheid.

Tech advances in wartime come home

Warfare furthers the development and refinement of advanced technologies of destruction. The US supplies Israel with billions of dollars worth of high-tech armaments. At the same time, technological advances in warfare developed in Israel are exported to the United States and other countries. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department recently purchased mass tracking software from an Israeli company. The software, also used in Texas, allows detection of geographic location and facial recognition. For decades, U.S. police have gone to Israel for training. The current generation of surveillance and military technology has produced a surveilled, policed, and violent world. We face an even more chilling future unless we challenge the military/industrial war economy, stop supplying weapons and other high tech equipment to other countries, and eliminate their use here in the US.