That seems to nonetheless embody the IDF. WIRED recognized a number of Israeli authorities statements and paperwork revealed since 2022 that verify the IDF’s continued involvement with Challenge Nimbus, though they don’t present particulars of the instruments and capabilities it makes use of.
As an example, a authorities doc revealed 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 providers they will entry underneath Challenge 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 complicated duties.
Official authorities pages outdated and new, each in Hebrew and English, characteristic the identical boilerplate description of Challenge Nimbus. It calls the contract “a multiyear and wide-ranging flagship mission, led by the Authorities Procurement Administration within the Accountant Basic’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 most important authorities pages about Challenge 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 staff from Amazon, Google, and the handfuls of different firms which have performed some hand in modernizing Israel’s tech infrastructure in recent times.
Shut Ties
Social media posts by Israeli officers, Amazon workers, and Google workers counsel the nation’s navy stays intently concerned with Challenge Nimbus—and the 2 US cloud firms engaged on it.
In June 2023, Omri Nezer, the pinnacle of the expertise 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 deliver collectively individuals from “totally different authorities workplaces inside ‘Challenge Nimbus.’”
Nezer’s submit mentions a panel on the convention that featured “an IDF consultant” and the pinnacle of engineering IT for Rafael Superior Protection Methods, a protection firm initially created as a analysis and improvement 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 by Challenge Nimbus. Amazon spokesperson Duncan Neasham tells WIRED that Rafael is “not required to make use of AWS or Google just for cloud providers” and might “additionally use different cloud suppliers’ providers.”
Nationwide safety companies stay an vital a part of Challenge Nimbus. In a 2023 LinkedIn submit tagged #nimbus, Omri Holzman, protection crew lead at Amazon Internet Companies, 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 loads of concentrate on the Nationwide Safety (NatSec) group which has its distinctive wants and necessities.”