Project Nimbus (Hebrew: פרויקט נימבוס) is a cloud computing project of the Israeli government and its military.[1][2][3][4] The Israeli Finance Ministry announced April 2021, that the contract is to provide "the government, the defense establishment, and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution."[1] Under the contract, the companies will establish local cloud sites that will "keep information within Israel's borders under strict security guidelines."[4] According to a Google spokesperson, the contract is for workloads related to "finance, healthcare, transportation, and education" and does not deal with highly sensitive or classified information.[5]
Project Nimbus has four planned phases: the first is purchasing and constructing the cloud infrastructure, the second is crafting government policy for moving operations onto the cloud, the third is moving operations to the cloud, and the fourth is implementing and optimizing cloud operations.[6] Under a $1.2 billion contract, technology companies Google (Google Cloud Platform) and Amazon (Amazon Web Services) were selected to provide Israeli government agencies with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.[7][1]
The terms Israel set for the project contractually forbid Amazon and Google from halting services due to boycott pressure.[8][9] The tech companies are also forbidden from denying service to any particular government entities.[9] A Google spokesperson said that all Google Cloud customers must abide by its terms of service which prohibit customers from using its services to violate people's legal rights or engage in violence.[5]
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Circa 2022, the contract drew rebuke and condemnation from the companies' shareholders as well as their employees, over concerns that the project would lead to further abuses of Palestinians' human rights in the context of the ongoing occupation and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[10][11][12][13] Specifically, they voice concern over how the technology will enable further surveillance of Palestinians and unlawful data collection on them as well as facilitate the expansion of Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land.[12]
Ariel Koren, who had worked as a marketing manager for Google's educational products and was an outspoken opponent of the project, was given the ultimatum of moving to São Paulo within 17 days or losing her job.[7][14] In a letter announcing her resignation to her colleagues, Koren wrote that Google "systematically silences Palestinian, Jewish, Arab and Muslim voices concerned about Google's complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights—to the point of formally retaliating against workers and creating an environment of fear," reflecting her view that the ultimatum came in retaliation for her opposition to and organization against the project.[7] She filed retaliation complaints with Google's human resources department and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which dismissed her case based on lack of evidence.[7] The NLRB also found that the ultimatum predated Koren's protected activities.[15]
In 2022, Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change launched a campaign called No Tech For Apartheid – also known as #NoTechForApartheid – opposing the project.[15][16] More than 200 Google workers joined a protest group named after this campaign, who argue that the relative lack of oversight for the project mean it will likely be used for violent purposes.[5]
In March 2024, a Google Cloud software engineer was fired after a video of them shouting "I refuse to build technology that empowers genocide," in reference to Project Nimbus, at a company event went viral.[17] In April, dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at Google's New York & Sunnyvale Headquarters to protest against Google supplying cloud computing software to the Israeli government. Employees occupied the office of Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian. Nine employees were charged with trespassing and 28 were fired.[18]
