That seems to nonetheless embrace the IDF. WIRED recognized a number of Israeli authorities statements and paperwork printed since 2022 that affirm the IDF’s continued involvement with Mission Nimbus, though they don’t present particulars of the instruments and capabilities it makes use of.
As an example, a authorities doc printed on June 15, 2022, that outlines the scope of the mission, says “The Ministry of Protection and the IDF” will get a devoted “digital market” of companies they’ll entry below Mission Nimbus.
In July 2022, The Intercept additionally reported on coaching paperwork and movies supplied to Nimbus customers within the Israeli authorities that exposed a few of the particular Google applied sciences the contract supplied entry to. They included AI capabilities reminiscent of face detection, object monitoring, sentiment evaluation, and different advanced duties.
Official authorities pages previous and new, each in Hebrew and English, function the identical boilerplate description of Mission Nimbus. It calls the contract “a multiyear and wide-ranging flagship mission, led by the Authorities Procurement Administration within the Accountant Normal’s Division within the Ministry of Treasury along with the Nationwide Digital Unit, the Authorized Bureau within the Ministry of Finance, the Nationwide Cyber Unit, the Price range Division, the Ministry of Protection and the IDF.” The assertion seems on one of many primary authorities pages about Mission Nimbus, an undated information launch, a 2022 cloud technique doc, and a press launch from January 2023.
A model of the assertion has additionally been posted in an Amazon steerage doc about Nimbus from January 2023, and on the occasion web page for the 2024 “Nimbus Summit,” a privately run occasion that brings collectively tech employees from Amazon, Google, and the handfuls of different firms which have performed some hand in modernizing Israel’s tech infrastructure lately.
Shut Ties
Social media posts by Israeli officers, Amazon staff, and Google staff counsel the nation’s navy stays intently concerned with Mission Nimbus—and the 2 US cloud firms engaged on it.
In June 2023, Omri Nezer, the top of the know-how infrastructure unit on the Israeli Authorities Procurement Administration, posted a recap of a cloud convention held by the Israeli authorities to LinkedIn. He wrote that it was meant to convey collectively individuals from “completely different authorities places of work inside ‘Mission Nimbus.’”
Nezer’s submit mentions a panel on the convention that featured “an IDF consultant” and the top of engineering IT for Rafael Superior Protection Techniques, a protection firm initially created as a analysis and growth firm for the Israeli navy. The Intercept reported final month that Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries, each Israeli government-backed weapons producers, are “compulsory clients” of Google and Amazon via Mission Nimbus. Amazon spokesperson Duncan Neasham tells WIRED that Rafael is “not required to make use of AWS or Google just for cloud companies” and might “additionally use different cloud suppliers’ companies.”
Nationwide safety companies stay an essential a part of Mission Nimbus. In a 2023 LinkedIn submit tagged #nimbus, Omri Holzman, protection crew lead at Amazon Internet Providers, summarized a current occasion AWS placed on for protection clients. “We had attendees from every safety group in Israel,” Holzman wrote, with out specifying which companies. “AWS places a variety of deal with the Nationwide Safety (NatSec) neighborhood which has its distinctive wants and necessities.”
