‘They use it to find an excuse’: Israel is using Microsoft’s Cloud to spy on Palestinians — and bomb them | World News

Unit 8200 has developed an AI tool, reportedly similar to ChatGPT, trained on these massive data troves. It can answer questions about individuals, offer insights from thousands of conversations, and flag potential targets. According to sources familiar with the system, this AI is being used to shape operations, justify detentions, and even assist in selecting bombing targets — sometimes based on who was near someone of interest.

Israel has always intercepted Palestinian communications. But under this system, Unit 8200 stores all Palestinian phone calls for at least a month, allowing them to retroactively examine anyone’s past conversations.

The system began taking shape in 2021, when Unit 8200’s commander, Yossi Sariel, met with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the company’s campus in Redmond. Sariel, who later resigned after the October 7 intelligence failure, pitched a plan to move Israeli military intelligence into the Azure cloud. Nadella reportedly backed the idea, telling Sariel: “Microsoft is committed to providing resources to support.”

Internal records, seen by The Guardian, show Nadella encouraged Unit 8200 to move up to 70 per cent of its data, including sensitive intelligence, into Microsoft’s cloud.

Microsoft now claims Nadella only attended the meeting for ten minutes and was unaware of the data’s nature. A spokesperson said: “We are not aware of Azure being used for the storage of such data.”

But The Guardian obtained leaked Microsoft documents and spoke to eleven sources in the company and Israeli intelligence. They confirm that Azure has hosted massive quantities of Palestinian surveillance data — up to 11,500 terabytes, equivalent to 200 million hours of audio, some of it stored in Microsoft data centres in the Netherlands and Ireland.

Sariel’s vision, following a wave of lone-wolf Palestinian attacks in 2015, was to stop selective surveillance and instead monitor everyone. One system, still in use today, scans Palestinian text messages and flags ones containing ‘suspicious’ words like ‘weapon’ or ‘death.’ Another, nicknamed ‘noisy message,’ assigns a threat rating to every message sent in the West Bank.

“When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, that’s where they find the excuse,” said one Unit 8200 source to the Guardian.

In Gaza, sources say the Azure-based system has been directly used to prepare airstrikes. Before hitting a target in a crowded area, officers examine recent calls made in the vicinity.

Microsoft has said that its technology must not be used to identify bombing targets. But sources in Unit 8200 say that’s exactly what is happening.

Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli military have sparked employee protests. At a conference in May, one employee interrupted Nadella’s keynote yelling, “how about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”

After The Guardian exposed the company’s role in January, Microsoft launched a review. The company has maintained it found “no evidence to date” that its systems were used to harm civilians. But intelligence officers familiar with the system insist otherwise. They say it’s helped kill thousands, including civilians and children.

As of now, Microsoft continues to provide Unit 8200 with cloud infrastructure. Azure remains a ‘mission-critical’ part of Israel’s surveillance machine, powering an AI-driven programme that listens to Palestinians, stores their voices, analyses their words, and sometimes helps choose who lives or dies.