☁️ Microsoft Is Powering Israel’s Genocide in Gaza — And Reaping Record Profits as a Result.
A joint investigation reveals Microsoft helped Israel’s Unit 8200 build the infrastructure for mass surveillance, airstrikes, and occupation — then made billions in profits from it all.
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🔍 The Cloud Behind the War Crimes
In a damning joint investigation by The Guardian and +972 Magazine we now know:
Microsoft helped build the surveillance infrastructure for Israel’s war on Gaza.
The tech giant didn’t just host Israeli data. It designed a custom, military-grade cloud system specifically for Unit 8200 — Israel’s elite cyberintelligence division. The system enabled mass surveillance of Palestinians and powered lethal operations across Gaza and the West Bank.
According to internal documents, whistleblower interviews, and Israeli military sources, Microsoft executives knew they were building a tool that would store millions of intercepted phone calls per day, primarily of Palestinians under occupation.
One internal Unit 8200 mantra summed it up: “A million calls an hour.”
By 2023, over 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data — equivalent to 200 million hours of audio — was stored across Microsoft’s servers in the Netherlands and Ireland.
Microsoft engineers embedded directly with Unit 8200 to build this. Some were former IDF intelligence officers themselves. Internally, Microsoft employees were told not to refer to “Unit 8200” by name — a sign of just how sensitive and potentially explosive the partnership truly was.
It was a strategic expansion — not an accident. And Microsoft called it a “brand moment.”
🎯 Surveillance Turned Deadly
Three Israeli intelligence sources confirmed: the Azure-powered system was used to plan and justify airstrikes in Gaza and arrests in the West Bank.
It worked like this: before a planned bombing, intelligence officers would search the cloud’s archive of Palestinian phone calls — often from civilians in the immediate vicinity — to justify a strike or identify individuals retroactively. Sometimes the strike came hours later. Sometimes it came days later. But the source was the same: a private phone call.
The system also fueled arrests, blackmail, and indefinite detentions.
“When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so,” one officer said, “that’s where they find the excuse.”
And that excuse lives — and grows — in the cloud.
📈 The Profits Came Fast
In April 2025, Microsoft reported one of its best quarters in company history:
$70.1 billion in revenue
$25.8 billion in profit
21% growth in Azure cloud services alone
Satya Nadella credited “cloud and AI” as the engine. But he never mentioned that some of that cloud growth came from hosting a mass surveillance system weaponized against an occupied people.
Leaked internal documents described the project as an “incredibly powerful brand moment” and anticipated hundreds of millions in long-term profit.
This is what genocide looks like in the digital age: maximized margins and minimized accountability.
⚖️ Violations of International Law
This wasn’t just a cloud deal. It’s a legal disaster.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, civilians in occupied territory are “protected persons.” Spying on them at scale, storing their private conversations, and using that data to facilitate bombings and arrests is a clear violation of their rights — likely constitutes complicity in war crimes.
Microsoft ignored warnings from its own legal advisors, who flagged potential violations of French, German, and Dutch human rights law. They knew it was risky. They did it anyway.
Their defense now is corporate amnesia. But the receipts are everywhere.
🕳️ Microsoft, Epstein, and the Culture of Compromise
There’s a final, deeply disturbing layer.
In 2017, Jeffrey Epstein attempted to blackmail Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates, over an affair Gates had with a young Russian bridge player, Mila Antonova.
Epstein had paid for the woman’s coding school tuition. Then, after Gates refused to join a multi-billion-dollar fund Epstein was building with JPMorgan, Epstein sent an email asking Gates to “reimburse” the costs — with the clear implication that if Gates didn’t play ball, the affair would be exposed.
According to The Guardian and Wall Street Journal, Epstein marketed this fund as a reputational firewall for ultra-wealthy men like Gates. His emails to JPMorgan portrayed himself as Gates’ close adviser — a relationship Gates later denied.
Melinda Gates was reportedly disturbed by Epstein’s presence for years before she divorced Bill - in part over all of this. Staff inside the Gates Foundation raised red flags. None of it stopped the meetings.
And here’s the relevance:
Microsoft isn’t just a company. It’s part of an elite ecosystem where power, money, and surveillance collide. Epstein — a known intelligence asset — didn’t just exploit that system. He helped build it. And Microsoft, through Azure, is still expanding it.
This isn’t about one blackmail attempt. It’s about the culture of impunity that connects Epstein’s tactics, Israeli surveillance, and Microsoft’s profit-driven war infrastructure.
This is how modern empire survives. With secrets. With access. With servers.
🏢 Every Genocide Has Corporate Partners
No genocide in history has ever happened without help.
There is always a factory that makes the chemicals. A bank that funds the machinery. A tech firm that builds the tracking tools. A CEO who “just signs the deal.”
In Rwanda, it was radio stations broadcasting the orders. In Nazi Germany, it was IBM providing punch card systems to catalogue Jews. In Myanmar, it was Facebook’s algorithms amplifying hate speech against Rohingya Muslims. In Gaza, it’s Microsoft — building the cloud that turns civilian surveillance into target acquisition systems.
Corporations don’t just enable genocide. They modernize it. They optimize the databases. They monetize the targeting. They turn human lives into scalable inputs.
And unless we stop them — they always walk away clean.
☁️ The Cloud Is a Weapon Now
Microsoft executives didn’t just look the other way. They helped build the system.
They knew it stored mass surveillance of civilians.
They knew it fueled military targeting.
They knew it might be illegal.
And they scaled it anyway.
This is what corporate complicity looks like in a genocide.
The cloud isn’t neutral. It’s militarized. And it’s killing people.
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Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun King
The one thing we've truly failed at is holding these corporations accountable. We're still using their products as they literally help fuel the genocide.
Just like IBM and the punchcards helping out Hitler. The world never learns the right lessons. Does it Shaun?