The internet, computers, genocide

I hate to constantly sing the same song: but really, the thesis of my book Surveillance Valley has been vindicated now a billion times over. The internet — aka networked computers — was created as a weapon by the Pentagon, and it remains a weapon today, vastly more powerful in its privatized version than military planners of the 1960s and 70s could ever imagine.

There has been some great reporting looking at how American computer companies — including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI — function as extensions of the Israeli occupation military. As old-school readers of my work know, American computer and internet companies have been deeply enmeshed within the security apparatus of the empire from the very beginning. In fact, they’re so tightly integrated that it’s basically impossible to say where Google or Microsoft ends and the Pentagon or the CIA begin. The same is true for Israel, which is itself a direct extension of the American Empire.

As recently reported by two Israeli publications — as well as the Guardian and Dropsite — Microsoft has for years been an integral part of Israel’s occupation regime, helping with surveillance, targeting, and population control. They’re so tightly integrated that, in some cases, Microsoft employees are indistinguishable from Israeli military and intel personnel. They all work together side-by-side. And that role has only intensified after October 7…and during the genocide in Gaza:

An intelligence officer who served in a technological role in Unit 8200 in recent years, and worked directly with Microsoft Azure employees before October 7 to develop a surveillance system used to monitor Palestinians, told +972 and Local Call that the company’s developers became so embedded that he referred to them as “people who are already working with the unit,” as if they were soldiers.

Another recent report in the Washington Post revealed that Google, who also has long been an integral part of Israel’s occupation regime, is in the same boat. Google reps tripped over themselves in a rush to sell Google AI services to Israel as Israel was ramping up the genocide in Gaza. “Genocide shmenocide. We can’t lose out to our main competitor, Microsoft!”

I’m old enough to remember that during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras, the internet was supposed to be a force for good — for democracy, freedom, and egalitarianism. That of course was always a sham — more corporate propaganda and Wall Street boosterism and consumer marketing than anything else. Today we are seeing the internet as it has always been rather than what the marketing copy that had been shoved into our faces. At its core, the internet’s really been about empire and control…wealth and power.

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Funny enough, the same assholes running the companies that constitute the American internet were at the inauguration sucking up to Donald Trump. Looking at these people reminded me why I think the idea that Israel controls America through the Jewish lobby is so ridiculous. Israel has America’s support because the American elite consensus believes supporting Israel is good for them…and thus is good for America. And let’s face it, Israel has been good for empire — good for business, good for destroying opposition to American power in the region… And American internet companies are very much a part of that success now. They’re a party to empire…a party to genocide.

There’s not much new here. Fact is, this relationship between war and genocide and computers goes way back. It’s important to remember that the first commercial computers — punch card machines — were made by an American company that later became IBM, and that they were used extensively in Germany by the Nazis as part of their drive to crunch census data and find and exterminate Jews. Germany was one of IBM’s best clients in the run-up to World War II. And IBM’s German subsidiary continued functioning even after America and Germany were officially at war and merged its assets back with its American parent company after the Nazis were defeated. I cover this in my book Surveillance Valley…and there’s a great book about it, too, IBM and the Holocaust.

Now it’s Jews — my people — who are involved in this same ugly business that our ancestors were subjected to: using American info-tech to more efficiently run Israel’s genocidal race-based occupation regime. And American companies are all too happy to oblige. Yeah, history rhymes.

—Yasha

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