Since 2015, the Israeli Ministry of Security has allocated more than $3.7 million toward the development of military technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as revealed in a recent report by students and faculty organizing against the recent war on Gaza. The findings, reported by The Intercept, shed light on MIT's deep ties to Israeli military projects and the growing controversy surrounding the university's role in military research.

The findings also come amid growing pressure on MIT administrators over censuring student publications that criticize the school’s research and advocate for Palestinian rights. The university has also been criticized for preventing student protesters from entering campus.

The report, published last month by the MIT Coalition for Palestine, represents 19 student and faculty groups, including MIT Divest, MIT Jews for Collective Liberation, and MIT Faculty and Staff for Palestine.

Dive deeper

Coalition members accessed the university’s internal grant-tracking software to uncover new details about projects funded by the Israeli military. These projects included research on underwater surveillance, missile detection, and drone algorithms.

“MIT has engaged in a sustained and organized campaign of disinformation and propaganda,” Rich Solomon, a coalition member and MIT graduate student who worked on the report, told The Intercept.

He also stated that after further investigations into the grants, the school revoked access to the software used by the coalition for their research.

The report also revealed MIT’s extensive partnerships with Israeli military contractors like Elbit Systems, which supplies 85 percent of "Israel’s" drones, and Maersk, a major shipping company that has transported millions of pounds of military goods to "Israel" since the onset of the war on Gaza. Some of these MIT projects were funded by the US Department of Defense.

MIT spokesperson Sarah McDonnell did not address specific questions about the report but referred to statements from the university’s leadership condemning “harassment, intimidation, and targeting” of particular professors and their research, The Intercept clarified.

“We respect that there is a range of views across that group on any number of topics, and as a general practice, our office does not comment to the media about the individually held and freely expressed views of particular students or alumni,” McDonnell said in a statement to The Intercept.

“MIT and its leadership are committed to promoting student well-being, protecting free speech, and responding to policy violations as appropriate,” the statement added.

Driving the news

Protests against the Israeli war on Gaza began on MIT’s campus in late 2023, joining a broader wave of campus demonstrations across the country in response to the Israeli atrocities. Since then, MIT leadership has faced growing calls from students and faculty to divest from research linked to the  Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In May, at least 10 MIT students were arrested during protests, and several others faced suspensions and were banned from campus, losing access to housing and meal plans. In October, the university also prohibited the distribution of a student-run zine that expressed support for Palestine.

In a May FAQ, MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles' office stated that only three contracts with the Israeli military are currently active, totaling $180,000.

Earlier this month, a campus newspaper retracted an article about the report. The paper’s editorial section was suspended until further notice. The editorial team explained that it retracted the article—originally published on November 7, which examined MIT professor Daniela Rus’ Israeli-funded research—after discussions with the executive committee and faculty advisers.

MIT spokesperson Sarah McDonnell told The Intercept that The Tech newspaper is editorially and financially independent from the university and that MIT did not influence the decision to suspend the opinion page or retract the article. Rus did not respond to a request for comment by The Intercept.

“Our decision was made in light of increasing hostile rhetoric and action against Professor Daniela Rus and her laboratory,” wrote publisher Ellie Montemayor in an addendum to the article on December 9.

The authors of the retracted piece later stated, “Our piece detailed how Prof. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, uses Israeli Ministry of Defense money to develop algorithms with applications in ‘multirobot security defense and surveillance.’ Rather than engage with these publicly verifiable facts, the Tech’s editorial board (under consultation with Prof. Rus) retracted our op-ed,” they wrote in a post on Mondoweiss.

A controversial collaboration under scrutiny

“Autonomous Robotic Swarms: Distributed Coordination and Perception” and “Terahertz Quantum-Cascade Lasers and Imaging” are two examples of projects funded by the Israeli military at MIT research labs, according to the new report.

MIT’s research ties to "Israel" have been a focal point of campus protests over the past two years. The latest report highlights the extent of the university’s collaboration with major military contractors, such as Maersk and Elbit Systems, as well as the potential uses of MIT's research in "Israel’s" recent military operations in Gaza.

The project, as per the report, explored underwater monitoring and autonomous docking technologies, which could assist "Israel" in policing its sea blockade of the Gaza Strip. Another focused on drone swarms, including AI-powered armed quadcopters that can mimic the sounds of women and children in distress. Reports suggest that "Israel" has used this technology to lure and kill people in Gaza.

“An ethical scientist and an ethical institution pursue scientific avenues that affirm life, that help repair the world, and that refuse to allow abusive militaries to launder their reputations while they commit mass murder,” the report’s authors wrote.

MIT also collaborates with multinational corporations that provide "Israel" with weapons and equipment used in its occupation of Palestine, such as Elbit Systems, Maersk, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Raytheon, and others. Raytheon, which originated at MIT and maintains a partnership with the school to place students at the company, supplies "Israel" with missiles and bombs. MIT also works with companies like Boeing, Aurora Flight Sciences, Google, and Amazon, which supply the Israeli military with weapons, research, and cloud computing services.

“These collaborations grant genocide profiteers privileged access to MIT talent and expertise,” the authors stated.

Calls to end research partnerships with "Israel" were a central demand in campus protests this spring. In March, 63 percent of undergraduate students voted in a referendum urging the student union to advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza—one of the highest-turnout elections in the school’s history. In April, MIT’s Graduate Student Union, UE Local 256, overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and demanding that the university sever all research ties with the Israeli military.

The MIT Chancellor's Office said negotiations with students fell short because they focused on the demand to end funding ties with the Israeli military. “There are a number of compelling reasons not to unilaterally terminate active research agreements made by individual PIs (principal investigators) in compliance with law and policy,” the Chancellor's Office explained in a FAQ section on student protests.

Comparing ties with 'Israel' to past decisions on human rights

MIT has severed ties with other international entities in cases where concerns arose about the university’s research potentially legitimizing or worsening human and civil rights abuses. For example, in 2020, MIT ended its partnerships with Saudi Aramco following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The university also conducts heightened risk assessments for projects funded by individuals or organizations in Saudi Arabia and China to avoid supporting violations of human rights.

“MIT’s research ties with the Israeli government similarly contribute to elevating the latter’s reputation despite its ongoing crimes against humanity,” the report stated. “Why should MIT engage in research sponsorships with the Israeli government at all given the scale of its human rights abuses in Palestine?”