Israel used Microsoft's cloud to surveil Palestinians | Press review n°25
I selected important news on artificial intelligence during the week of September 22 to 28, 2025.
Welcome to the twenty-fifth press review of Artificial reality. This week I focused on the use of Microsoft’s cloud by the Israeli army, on the controversial chatbots of Meta, and on military AI. Have a good read!
📰 Read
Israel used Microsoft’s cloud to surveil Palestinians
The U.S. company Microsoft has disabled a set of services it was providing to an Israeli military’s spy agency which is operating a mass surveillance of Palestinians, The Guardian revealed in an article published on Thursday.
This unit records millions of phone calls of Palestinians everyday to play them back and analyze them. Until recently, it was storing a large portion of this data in Microsoft’s Azure cloud, especially in a data center in the Netherlands. This remote storage system has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes by the Israeli army and has shaped its military operations in Gaza and in the West Bank, according to three sources from that unit.
Around September 20, Microsoft informed Israeli officials that their spy unit was not respecting its terms of service by storing surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform. The agency can thus no longer access the cloud or the AI services of the tech company.
Microsoft’s president Brad Smith informed staff of the decision on Thursday. “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades,” he wrote in his email.
The spy agency had been operating its mass surveillance program using Microsoft’s technology for three years, before an investigation by The Guardian published in August prompted the company to launch an inquiry to review its relationship with the unit. According to sources interviewed by the British newspaper, Israel planned to transfer this data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform.
Under pressure
Microsoft has been under pressure for months because of its collaboration with the Israeli military, which was recently accused of committing a genocide by a United Nations commission. Protests took place in August at the company’s U.S. headquarters and on the roof of one of its European data centers, among others.
An event celebrating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary was also interrupted by two employees who were denouncing the use of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence by Israel’s army.
Israel’s mass surveillance: Microsoft blocks the army from using its software (Al Jazeera English)
Microsoft’s decision to deactivate the access of this spy unit to its cloud is the first known case of a U.S. technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war in Gaza. However, Microsoft maintains their commercial relationship and will continue to provide this army access to other services.
Seven important news this week
How Surveillance Firms Use ‘Democracy’ As a Cover for Serving ICE and Trump (404 Media)
LinkedIn will soon use your data to train AI. Here’s what you can do to opt out. (Proton)
If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies review – how AI could kill us all (The Guardian)
OpenAI really, really wants you to start your day with ChatGPT Pulse (The Verge)
Neon, the No. 2 social app on the Apple App Store, pays users to record their phone calls and sells data to AI firms (TechCrunch)
Silicon Valley’s latest argument against regulating AI: that would literally be the Antichrist (The Verge)
Boeing’s defense and space unit partners with Palantir for AI adoption (Reuters)
🎥 Watch
Controversial chatbots
More Perfect Union published a video on chatbots on Thursday, in particular those of Meta. The host addresses several topics such as the “loneliness epidemic” that chatbots are supposed to help with, the suicides of teenagers who might have been encouraged to take their life by AI assistants, and the fact that these bots sometimes flirt with children.
What Mark Zuckerberg Is Hiding About His AI Chatbots (More Perfect Union)
Seven important videos this week
Total Surveillance, Censorship, And Behavior Control Are Real Goals Of Digital ID Advocates (Public)
Expert’s Dire Warning: Superhuman AI Will Kill Us All (Breaking Points)
Companies Are Lying About AI Layoffs - Here’s the Proof (Vanessa Wingårdh)
AI’s potential use in nuclear weapons ‘challenges future of humanity’, Penny Wong tells UN (The Guardian)
The Alarming Rise Of AI ‘Nudify’ Apps Creating Explicit Images Of Real People (CNBC)
Why Apple Has a Big AI Problem (Bloomberg)
ChatGPT is Dying: The Rise of Latent Space AI (Hey AI)
🔈 Listen
In a new episode of Decoder, journalist Hayden Field talks about military AI with Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute and one of the industry’s leading experts in the safety of AI within autonomous weapons systems.
They explain how OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all active in this domain.
Listen to Decoder on The Verge
Thank you for reading the twenty-fifth press review of Artificial reality! Subscribe for free to receive the reviews directly into your mailbox. With a paid subscription, you will also have access to all articles and to an exclusive monthly newsletter.
Have a good week,
Arnaud
