Project Nimbus- an AI/L tool for the Israeli military?

Project Nimbus- an AI/L tool for the Israeli military?

Tel Aviv, 7/28/2022.

According to a report by The Intercept, Google is providing AI and machine learning tools to the Israeli government as part of a $1.2 billion cloud solutions contract.

The capabilities reportedly include facial and object recognition under Project Nimbus, a contract Google and Amazon Web Services signed last year with the Israeli government and military.

Google Cloud and AWS beat out Oracle, IBM and Microsoft for the Nimbus contract, which aims to provide cloud services to Israeli government agencies.
The massive four-phase project will consolidate the Israeli government’s cloud computing needs onto servers within the country’s borders instead of remote data centers, protecting them from outside threats.

Google and Amazon employees, as well as human rights activists, have raised concerns that the tools will be used to support the Israeli military occupation in Palestine.
No further details about Nimbus have yet been released. However, The Intercept reports that Google is providing a full suite of AI/ML tools via Google Cloud as part of the deal.

The new cloud can provide the Israeli government with automatic image categorization, facial recognition, object tracking and so-called „sentiment analysis,“ according to training documents. Many of these features could „easily improve Israel’s ability to monitor people and process vast amounts of data,“ The Intercept concluded.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)