NSA, US AI firm feeding raging Israeli killing machine: The Nation
4 Min Read
AI tech provided by an American company and raw information given to the Israeli occupation from the NSA has contributed to the slaughter of thousands in Gaza since October.
-
Palestinians inspect the damage from a vehicle after Israeli strikes in Deir al-Balah on April 1, 2024. (AP)
The Israeli occupation has numerous facilities where high-tech espionage takes place. Of them, the most secretive according to Damford, is Unit 8200's headquarters, which is comparable to the US National Security Agency, focused on espionage, codebreaking, and cyberwars, James Bamford reported in The Nation.
The Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center is one of Unit 8200's newest and most important units. According to a spokesperson, the center was in charge of building AI technologies that "transformed the entire concept of targets." In 2021, "Israel" branded its 11-day war on Gaza as the world's first "AI war".
Bamford highlights how such technology allowed the precise targeting of the World Central Kitchen vehicles.
Some of the advanced targeting software is provided by an American company, Palantir Technologies. Palantir provided the IOF with sophisticated and mighty targeting capabilities, which allowed it to target aid workers.
AI warfare like having a 'nuclear weapon'
Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO of the company, touted the company's capabilities in a visit to the occupation last January even though he admitted the product "is used on occasion to kill people," prompting some of his staff to resign due to the company's complicity in the genocide.
Karp has stated that “the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.”
Palantir's AI robots require data to function, namely intelligence reports on Palestinians in the occupied territory. According to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency has been a vital and highly classified source of such data for "Israel" for decades, including raw, unredacted phone and email communications between Palestinians in the US and their families in Palestine.
The agreement between the NSA and "Israel" cites the routine sending of "minimized and unminimized raw collection…as part of the SIGINT relationship between the two organizations.”
“Raw SIGINT includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content," it adds.
Bamford cites how sources have disclosed that the NSA continues to provide the occupation with information that could allow them to target specific Palestinians.
Karp recently explained how Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine," and according to the company, it is in the middle of developing a mightier AI targeting system called TITAN (“Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node”).
NSA accused of politically persecuting Palestinians
According to a recent probe by +972 Magazine and Local Call, Unit 8200 is now utilizing a technique known as "Lavender" to locate targets for bombing and was used in areas including densely populated residential ones, leading to mass civilian casualties.
Lavender analyzes the personal data of Gaza’s residents and lists those suspected of ties to the Palestinian Resistance group Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
One intelligence officer who used Lavender said, "The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier."
“I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time,” said another soldier.
The report describes how the IOF sifts through surveillance data provided by the NSA to generate long kill lists for targets.
Read more: UN expresses fear that 'Israel' is using AI in airstrikes on Gaza
Unit 8200's targeting of innocent Palestinians in the occupied territories became so harsh that in 2014, 43 veterans of the Israeli unit publicly accused the organization of shocking atrocities, citing they had a "moral duty" to no longer partake in the "political persecution" of innocent Palestinians.
In media interviews and personal accounts, they divulged that data on Palestinians' sexual orientations, infidelities, financial issues, family illnesses, and other private matters were collected to coerce Palestinians into becoming collaborators or cause divisions in their society.
The investigation found that the IOF intentionally bombed entire families after AI algorithms told them one individual was present. "Thousands of Palestinians—most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting—were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.”
