How Israel used Microsoft technology to spy on Palestinians

以色列如何利用微软技术对巴勒斯坦人进行间谍活动

Today in Focus

2025-08-14

28 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

Harry Davies on how Microsoft’s cloud was used to facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
更多

单集文稿 ...

  • This is The Guardian.

  • Today, when Israel's spy chief met Microsoft's CEO.

  • In November 2021,

  • An Israeli intelligence commander landed in Seattle for a series of confidential meetings.

  • His name is Yossi Sariel.

  • And at the time, he was in charge of Unit 8200, a branch of Israel's military intelligence.

  • He had a plan for a massive clandestine surveillance project,

  • but it would need advanced computing power.

  • So Sariel went to one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Microsoft.

  • So the campus looks a little bit like university.

  • It's very big.

  • It's quite green.

  • You have engineers wandering around with laptops.

  • And he spent the day on the campus talking to executives, holding meetings.

  • And it was during his trip to the headquarters that he met with Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft.

  • This is Harry Davis, investigations correspondent at The Guardian,

  • who has exclusively revealed what was discussed between one of the most powerful men in Israel.

  • and a titan in the tech industry.

  • There was one meeting in particular later in the afternoon,

  • and what we can tell from the records and documents that we've seen is that Sariel had spoken to Microsoft about a plan to transfer large amounts of Unate 200's data,