The unsigned blog post on Microsoft’s website appears to be the first public endorsement of the company’s in-depth involvement in the war, which began after Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in thousands of deaths in Gaza.
Nearly three months after the Associated Press investigation, it revealed details about the close partnership between the U.S. tech giant and the Israeli Department of Defense, with military use of commercial AI products soaring nearly 200 times after the deadly October 7, 2023. The Associated Press reported that the Israeli military used Azure to transcribe, translate and process the intelligence collected through large-scale surveillance, which can then be linked to the Israeli internal AI-AI-NOI-AI-NOI-AI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-NOI-ADICHECTING TOAGIONANT Systems and vice versa.
The partnership reflects an increasing momentum for tech companies to sell their AI products to the military, including in Israel, Ukraine and the United States. However, human rights groups raise concerns about possible flawed and prone to errors in AI systems that are used to help make decisions about who or what goals, resulting in the death of innocent people.
Microsoft said Thursday that employee attention and media reports prompted the company to initiate an internal review and hire external companies to conduct “extra fact-finding.” The statement does not identify external companies or provide copies of their reports.
The statement has not directly addressed several questions about how the Israeli military uses its technology, and the company declined further comments on Friday. Microsoft declined to answer a written question from the Associated Press about how its AI model translates, classifies and analyzes the intelligence of the military using air strike targets.
The company’s statement said it has provided the Israeli military with software, professional services, Azure Cloud Storage and Azure AI services, including language translation, and has worked with the Israeli government to protect its national cyberspace from external threats. Microsoft said it also provides “special access beyond the terms of our business agreement” and “limited emergency support” to Israel as part of an effort to save Hamas’ arrest of more than 250 hostages on Oct. 7.
“We provide significant oversight on a limited basis, including approving certain requests and denying help from others,” Microsoft said. “We believe the company follows its principles, a careful foundation to help save the lives of hostages, while also respecting the privacy and other rights of Gaza civilians.”
The company did not answer the company as part of an internal investigation, and the external companies hired were communicated or consulted with the Israeli military. It also did not respond to requests for additional details on other special assistance for the specific steps to seek hostages for the Israeli military or to protect Palestinian rights and privacy.
The company also acknowledged in its statement that it “has no visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.” The company added that it does not know how to use its products through other commercial cloud providers.
In addition to Microsoft, the Israeli military has signed extensive cloud or AI services contracts with Google, Amazon, Palantir and several other major U.S. technology companies.
Microsoft said that like any other customer, the Israeli military will definitely follow the company’s acceptable use policies and AI code of conduct, which prohibits the use of products to cause harm in any way prohibited by law. The company said in a statement that it found “no evidence” that the Israeli military violated the terms.
Emelia Probasco, senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Safety and Emerging Technologies, said the statement is worth noting because few commercial technology companies explicitly set standards for global cooperation with international governments.
“We are at an amazing moment, and companies, not governments, are directing terms of use to governments actively involved in conflicts,” she said. “It’s like a tank manufacturer telling a country that you can only use our tanks for these specific reasons. It’s a new world.”
Israel used its enormous intelligence to target Islamic militants and attacked raids in Gaza, which sought help from hostages, with civilians often trapped in exchange of fire. For example, a February 2024 operation released two Israeli hostages in Rafah, killing 60 Palestinians. A raid in the Nuseirat refugee camp in June 2024 imprisoned Hamas four Israeli hostages, but killed at least 274 Palestinians.
Overall, Israeli invasion and extensive bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon resulted in more than 50,000 deaths, many of them women and children.
A group of current and former Microsoft employees have segregated no Azure calls on the company to release a full copy of the investigation report publicly.
“It is obvious that their intention to do this statement is not to really address the concerns of their workers, but to make their relationship with the Israeli military a crushed image to affect their image,” said Hossam Nasr.
Electronic Border Foundation executive director Cindy Cohn took a step forward in transparency for Microsoft on Friday. But the statement raised many unresolved questions, including details about the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft’s services and AI models on its own government servers.
“I’m glad there’s a little transparency here,” Cohen said, who has long called on the U.S. tech giants to be more open to their military contracts. “But it’s hard to balance with what’s actually happening on the ground.”
