Leaked documents show Cisco doubled down on Israeli military deals
theguardian.com10 points0 comments
Leaked internal documents show Cisco worked to preserve and expand its business with Israeli military and intelligence agencies during the Gaza war, despite employee protests and mounting scrutiny of Israel’s conduct. A 2025 memo described repeated outages and system crashes affecting Israeli military intelligence networks, which weakened the customer’s confidence and threatened cancellation of the contract. Cisco mobilized senior staff and technical teams over several months, sent personnel under tight security to work with the secretive Sapir unit, and restored the systems. The company later presented the repair effort as a “customer success story.” Contracts with Israeli military intelligence generated about $67m over three years, and documents list dozens of 2026 deals with government, air force and navy clients, many categorized as AI-related.
The records also show Cisco subsidiary Splunk pitched to join Project Nimbus, the cloud contract held by Google and Amazon for the Israeli government; they do not establish whether it secured a role. Cisco employees organized as Bridge to Humanity say military work contradicts the company’s public ethics commitments and makes it complicit in harm to Palestinians. Their objections unfolded alongside an EEOC finding of reasonable cause to believe Cisco permitted a hostile, discriminatory workplace affecting Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees. Cisco rejected that finding. Investors have urged an independent human-rights review of the company’s military business, and shareholders were due to vote on such a proposal. The disclosures underscore how networking hardware and software underpin military operations, even as public debate focuses more heavily on cloud and AI providers.
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