Israeli signals-intelligence unit; stored Palestinians' calls on Microsoft Azure
Military · Israel · Organization
Unit 8200 is the Israeli military's signals intelligence unit and the collection engine of the AI kill chain. A joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call found it stored intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft's Azure cloud, aiming for 'a million calls an hour', after its commander Yossi Sariel met Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in November 2021. By 2025 about 11,500 terabytes sat in a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands. Sources said the data was used to plan lethal airstrikes in Gaza and to arrest Palestinians in the West Bank. In September 2025 Microsoft disabled some of the services; the unit planned to move the data to Amazon Web Services, shopping for a landlord with fewer questions. The same reporters revealed in March 2025 that it was building a ChatGPT-like model trained on 100 billion words of Arabic drawn partly from surveillance of Palestinians. Al Jazeera reports Palantir has actively recruited its veterans.
Unit 8200 stored intercepted Palestinian calls on Microsoft Azure, aiming for 'a million calls an hour', with about 11,500 terabytes in the Netherlands by 2025. Sources said the data was used to plan lethal airstrikes in Gaza and arrests in the West Bank. After Microsoft disabled some services in September 2025, the unit planned to move to AWS.
Sources: aljazeera.com, timesofisrael.com, Microsoft
+972, Local Call and The Guardian reported in March 2025 that the unit was building a ChatGPT-like model trained on '100 billion words of Arabic' drawn partly from surveillance of Palestinians. 'I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing,' a source said. Al Jazeera reports Palantir has actively recruited the unit's veterans.
Sources: al-monitor.com, timesofisrael.com
● confirmed by a primary document · ○ reported
the unit planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform instead
Israel's elite cyber-intelligence unit stored vast volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft's cloud servers ... Three sources from Unit 8200 said that the cloud-based system helped guide deadly air strikes and shaped operations across the occupied Palestinian territories.
We have informed IMOD of Microsoft's decision to cease and disable specified IMOD subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services. ... The vast majority of Microsoft's contract with the Israeli military remains intact.
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