According to the Washington Post, following Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7  October, employees at Google’s cloud division worked directly with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) despite publicly claiming only to work with civilian government ministries.

The Post reports that weeks into the conflict, a Google Cloud division employee escalated the IDF’s requests for access to Google’s AI technology.

Another document revealed an employee's warning that failing to respond quickly to the IDF’s requests could prompt Israel to turn to Amazon for its cloud computing needs. A November 2023 document included an employee thanking a coworker for handling the IDF’s requests, with additional access to AI tools requested months later.

During this period, Google faced internal protests over Project Nimbus, Israel’s $1.2 billion contract for Google and Amazon’s cloud computing services. The company fired 28 employees who demonstrated against the project at Google’s New York and California offices, some of whom were arrested during the protests.

Meanwhile, Google continued to deny collaborating with the Israeli military.

Google Cloud External communications manager Anna Kowalczyk told the Verge in April 2024: “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.” Said.

“This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” Kowalczyk added.