A senior defense source on Thursday night said that Microsoft’s decision to cut off intelligence Unit 8200 from cloud and artificial intelligence services was not causing any harm to the IDF’s operations.
Earlier Thursday, Microsoft said it disabled a set of cloud and AI services used by a unit within the Defense Ministry after an internal review found preliminary evidence supporting media reports of a surveillance system in Gaza and the West Bank.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said the company opened the review after an article by The Guardian alleged activity by an IDF unit.
A joint investigation published in early August by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call reported that an Israeli military surveillance agency used Microsoft’s Azure to store large volumes of mobile phone call recordings from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
The Guardian investigation said Israel relied on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians.
However, long before the IDF received assistance from Microsoft, it had its own native and independent capabilities in cyber, signals intelligence, and other technological means for tracking and learning critical details about adversaries and their plans.
Microsoft technologies have also not been involved in all of the fronts of the war, but rather have been reported on mainly regarding the Palestinians, and open-source telephones in particular, as opposed to penetrating closed systems – something the IDF has also succeeded in doing on its own.
Nevertheless, Microsoft said it found evidence supporting elements of The Guardian’s reporting, including details on the Defense Ministry’s consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services.
“We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians,” Smith said in a Microsoft blog.
Microsoft has informed the ministry of its “decision to cease and disable specified [Defense Ministry] subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies.”
The action does not impact Microsoft’s cybersecurity services to Israel and other countries in the Middle East, Smith said.
Microsoft's ties to Israel
In late August, Microsoft fired four employees who took part in protests on company premises over its ties to Israel as the war in Gaza continues, including two who joined a sit-in at the office of the company’s president.
Microsoft said the terminations followed serious breaches of company policies, and the on-site demonstrations had “created significant safety concerns.”
The terminations of anti-Israel employees on one side versus the cutting off of cloud and AI services on the other side show the new tightrope that companies that are close to Israel are having to walk in the new, much more anti-Israel atmosphere that has taken hold in much of the West as the war has dragged on far beyond what many ever expected.