Microsoft has suspended the Israeli military’s access to its cloud and artificial intelligence systems after revelations that its technology was used to fuel a vast surveillance programme targeting Palestinians. According to leaked files, intercepted calls from Gaza and the West Bank were collected on an industrial scale, monitored, and mined to help identify bombing targets in the ongoing genocide.

The scale of the operation was staggering, with insiders describing a motto of “a million calls per hour.” By mid-2025, the trove had expanded to more than 11,000 terabytes, the equivalent of 200 million hours of audio recordings. This mass interception not only stripped Palestinians of privacy but also turned their daily lives into data points in a machinery of destruction.

Reports indicate that senior figures at Microsoft were aware of the scale of the military’s activities as far back as 2021, yet the partnership continued until the recent suspension. The decision to cut access marks a rare challenge to Israel’s unchecked surveillance apparatus, raising pressing questions about the complicity of global tech giants in systems that facilitate war crimes and genocide.