Google Cloud was briefly listed as a sponsor of an Israeli military tech conference before its logo was removed from the conference website. The conference organizers say Google was not a sponsor this year and Google’s inclusion was potentially a mistake. Regardless, Google workers are concerned about their employer’s links to an Israeli military conference, and Google has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
The conference, organized by the Israeli media outlet People & Computers and called “IT for IDF 2024,” describes itself as the “leading annual summit conference for military IT and security” on its website. Its program lists a series of 10-minute presentations by current and former IDF officials and Israeli technology company executives that took place yesterday, and included multiple talks on the use of AI and cloud computing in the Israel-Gaza war.
Until Monday afternoon, Google Cloud’s logo was included in the conference’s list of sponsors, along with Cisco, Nokia, Dell Technologies, and numerous Israeli companies. By Tuesday afternoon, both the Google Cloud and Cisco logos had been removed.
People & Computers SVP of marketing and events Natali Gabay told 404 Media on a call that she was not aware Google Cloud was listed as a sponsor and that it is not sponsoring the event this year.
“It’s possible that we used their logo by mistake but they are not a sponsor, as far as I know,” she said.
Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
"Cisco is not a sponsor of this conference," Cisco told told 404 Media in an email.
Google Cloud is still listed as a sponsor for IT for IDF 2023, which took place on June 28, 2023, months before the Israel-Gaza war. IT for IDF 2023 also featured a talk from “Generative AI: The Next Frontier of Innovation” by Google Cloud customer engineer Laura Bouaziz.
Multiple talks at IT for IDF 2024 reference the “Swords of Iron War,” which is how the Israel Defense Forces refer to the Israel-Gaza war. One presentation by Colonel Racheli Dambinski of IDF’s Center for Computing and Information Systems is titled in Hebrew, “The IDF's cloud platforms and computing centers in ‘Operation Iron Swords.’” Another presentation by Colonel Eli Birnbaum of the IDF’s Computer Service Directorate, titled “‘The information in the service of war’ - How technology assists operational effectiveness in the Swords of Iron War,” is subject to the approval of an IDF spokesperson.
In a LinkedIn post, Udi Kauf, the chairman of the conference’s content committee, shared images of the program’s content and sponsors, which include the Google Cloud logo.
“After months of preparations with high uncertainty, today it is happening—IT4IDF2024—the summit conference on ICT [information and communication technology] for the army and security by People & Computers in collaboration with the Association for the Commemoration of the Fallen Soldiers of the Communication and IT Corps,” Kauf wrote in the post.
The logo in the sponsor list was first spotted by No Tech For Apartheid, a coalition of workers who have called on Google and Amazon Web Services to cut their $1.2 billion contract to supply the Israeli government with cloud computing services, known as Project Nimbus.
“It has come to our attention that Google is likely sponsoring ‘IT for IDF,’ an arms trade conference happening this week in Tel Aviv,” the Google employees organizing with No Tech For Apartheid wrote in an emailed statement. “Interestingly, as of July 9, 2024, Google Cloud’s logo no longer appears as a sponsor on the ‘IT for IDF’ website. We have reasons to believe that the abrupt removal of the logo is in part a response to the alarm that Google workers of conscience have raised internally. If the association with the IDF is compromising enough to hide, we challenge Google to do the right thing and drop Project Nimbus immediately.”
The workers noted that Google Cloud has sponsored this conference in previous years.
Google has repeatedly downplayed Project Nimbus, and has said its cloud computing services are instead used by “Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education” and “not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” In April, the company fired 28 workers who protested Project Nimbus.
A story on People & and Computers’ site about Colonel Racheli Dambinski presentation quotes her as saying that the IDF’s cloud computing is “a weapon in every sense of the word.” According to People & and Computers’ story, Dambinski also said that since the war IDF’s Center for Computing and Information Systems has “utilized public cloud providers AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft” because of their “ability to scale and consume computing resources almost infinitely, strong cyber defense capabilities, additional effectiveness, an incredible wealth of services, and the ability to handle big data and use AI tools. Therefore, responsibly and cautiously, we moved to the civilian cloud.”
People & Computers, the conference organizer, regularly produces business-to-business events for tech companies and issues an IT newsletter. Its website lists Google Cloud as a client.
Emanuel Maiberg provided additional reporting for this story.
