A year into the war in Gaza, the networks of Israel’s military intelligence community were plagued with technical problems. There were major, multi-hour outages to their systems, and repeated crashes. Built-in debugging mechanisms failed.
The problems, which started as intelligence operations were undergoing updates to digital infrastructure, became so persistent as to undermine the “confidence” of Israeli intelligence agencies in one of their top network providers: the multinational tech conglomerate Cisco. Cisco, one of the largest tech companies in the world and at one point the single most valuable, is often described as selling the “plumbing” of the internet. It provides the routers, servers and communications systems that move data for companies, governments and militaries around the globe.
While its business ties to the Israeli military have received less scrutiny than those of other tech giants, the company has worked with the Israeli security state for years. Israel’s military intelligence contracts alone generated about $67m in business in three years, according to a 2025 document reviewed by the Guardian. While Cisco’s involvement with Israel’s military before and since 2023 has been documented before, the leaked documents obtained by the Guardian reveal the lengths the company went to in order to preserve and expand the relationship as the war in Gaza dragged on.
They also show that earlier this year, Splunk – a Cisco subsidiary platform that can process and analyze massive volumes of machine-generated data – made a pitch to join the controversial cloud computing contract between the Israeli government, Google and Amazon known as Project Nimbus. Cisco pursued these opportunities as the mass killing of civilians in Gaza was amply documented, international organizations and governments began to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, and the company itself was roiled by internal turmoil over its own role in the war. Cisco did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military wrote in a statement to the Guardian: “The [Israel Defense Forces] is assisted by services provided by a range of companies to meet its ongoing needs and objectives. The IDF does not intend to comment on matters relating to contracts or services provided by other entities.” Members of Bridge to Humanity, a group of current and former Cisco workers who have objected to the company’s role in the Gaza war, called the company’s work with Israeli intelligence a “shocking and complete contradiction of values Cisco sells to us employees and externally to its customers, investors, and the public”. They said the company, which pitches itself internally and to the public as an ethics-driven company, had become “an instrument of genocide”.
Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found reasonable cause to believe that, following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, Cisco oversaw a hostile work environment rife with racist rhetoric that violated the rights of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees. Cisco previously told the Guardian that it disagreed with the EEOC’s findings and that it is committed to being an equal opportunity employer. The Bridge to Humanity members alleged that the treatment they endured was linked directly to Cisco’s business interests.
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