Cisco expedited repairs for Israeli military after outages

Leaked documents have shed new light on Cisco’s collaboration with Israel’s military intelligence, revealing that the tech firm generated approximately $67 million per year over a three-year period from this partnership.

Project Nimbus and Internal Repairs

A cache of confidential documents obtained by The Guardian from disgruntled Cisco staff members has uncovered the company’s involvement with Israeli military units, including a bid by Splunk’s subsidiary to participate in Project Nimbus, which aims to provide cloud services to Israeli government agencies.

Although Cisco had established ties with Israeli agencies prior to the October 2023 military operations in Gaza, the company reportedly expedited efforts to rectify its relationship with Israeli intelligence forces following multihour outages caused by its equipment, despite the estimated 70,000 civilian casualties in Gaza.

According to internal documents, system updates implemented during the conflict had a profound impact on “customer sentiment” due to repeated outages that severely disrupted critical operations. Cisco deemed its account with Israeli intelligence a “critical” one and deployed multiple teams to resolve technical issues over several months, including sending staff to a secretive Israeli military unit tasked with relocating critical infrastructure underground.

The leaked documents also reveal that Cisco sought to restore “customer confidence” and mitigate “negative sentiment” through damage control efforts, which were touted as a “customer success story” in an internal presentation.

These revelations come on the heels of a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding of “reasonable cause” that Cisco created a hostile work environment for Muslim and Middle Eastern employees. Staff members had complained about racist and Islamophobic content posted on internal messaging platforms following the October attacks by Hamas, with some posts allegedly celebrating civilian deaths. Meanwhile, posts from staff members who expressed concerns about Cisco’s sales to the Israeli government were reportedly removed, and those who spoke out faced targeted posts.

Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s findings, stating that it is committed to being an equal opportunity employer, as reported by The Guardian.