Google contract shows agreement with Israel Ministry of Defense

GOogle provides cloud computing services to Israel’s Defense Ministry, and the tech giant negotiated a deepening of its partnership during Israel’s war in Gaza, a company document seen by TIME shows.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense, according to the document, has its own “landing zone” on Google Cloud – a secure entry point into the computing infrastructure provided by Google, which would allow the ministry to store and process data and access AI services.

The ministry sought consulting assistance from Google to expand its access to Google Cloud, seeking to allow “multiple units” to access automation technologies, according to a draft contract dated March 27, 2024. The contract shows that Google will charge from the Israeli Ministry of Defense more than US$1 million. for consultancy service.

The version of the contract viewed by TIME was not signed by Google or the Ministry of Defense. But a March 27 comment on the document, made by a Google employee requesting an enforceable copy of the contract, said that signatures would be “completed offline as this is an Israel/Nimbus agreement.” Google also granted the ministry a 15% discount on the original price of consultancy fees as a result of the “Nimbus framework”, the document says.

Project Nimbus is a controversial $1.2 billion cloud computing and AI deal between the Israeli government and two technology companies: Google and Amazon. Reports in the Israeli press previously indicated that Google and Amazon are contractually prohibited from preventing specific Israeli state weapons from using their technology within the scope of Project Nimbus. But this is the first time that the existence of a contract showing that the Israeli Ministry of Defense is a Google Cloud customer has been made public.

Google recently described its work for the Israeli government as largely for civilian purposes. “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads run on our commercial platform by Israeli government ministries such as finance, health, transportation and education,” a Google spokesperson told TIME for a story published on 8 April. It is not intended for highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

Contacted on April 10 with questions about the Ministry of Defense contract, a Google spokesperson declined to comment further.

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The news comes after the recent reports in Israeli media have claimed that the country’s military, controlled by the Ministry of Defense, is using an AI-powered system to select targets for airstrikes in Gaza. Such an AI system would likely require a cloud computing infrastructure to function. The Google contract seen by TIME does not specify which military applications, if any, the Ministry of Defense uses Google Cloud for, and there is no evidence that Google Cloud technology is being used for targeting purposes. But Google employees who spoke to TIME said the company has little ability to monitor what customers, especially sovereign nations like Israel, are doing on its cloud infrastructure.

Israel’s Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense’s attempt to integrate more units into Google Cloud is described in the contract as “phase 2” of a broader project to build the ministry’s cloud architecture.

The document does not explicitly describe the first phase, but refers to previous work carried out by Google on behalf of the ministry. The ministry, says the contract, “has [already] have established a Google Cloud Landing Zone infrastructure as part of their overall cloud strategy and to enable [the Ministry of Defense] to move applications to Google Cloud Platform.”

For “phase 2” of the project, the contract says, the Ministry of Defense “seeks to allow its Landing Zone to serve multiple units and subunits. Therefore, [the Ministry of Defense] would like to create several different automation modules within your Landing Zone based on Google’s leading practices for the benefit of different units, with appropriate processes to support, and to implement leading practices for security architecture and governance using Google tools. ”

The consulting services offered by Google are for the technology company to “assist with architectural design, implementation guidance and automation” for the Ministry of Defense’s Google Cloud landing zone, the contract says. The estimated start date is April 14, and Google’s consulting services are expected to take one calendar year to complete.

Two Google employees resigned last month in protest over Project Nimbus, TIME previously reported.