A ‘customer success story’: leaked documents show Cisco doubled down on Israeli military deals during Gaza war
Leaked documents reveal Cisco intensified business with Israeli military intelligence despite technical failures during the Gaza war, which has killed over 70,000 Palestinians.
A year into the war in Gaza, Israel's military intelligence networks suffered persistent technical problems including multi-hour outages and system crashes, undermining confidence in their provider, Cisco. The multinational tech giant, which provides critical network infrastructure globally, worked to preserve its relationship with Israeli intelligence despite these failures and international condemnation of the conflict.
During a period of national conflict, these repeated outages severely impacted critical operations.
Military contracts expanded
Cisco's Israeli military intelligence contracts generated about $67 million in business over three years, according to internal documents. The company pursued these opportunities as mass civilian casualties in Gaza were extensively documented, with international organizations referring to Israel's actions as genocide.
Cisco subsidiary Splunk attempted to join Project Nimbus, the controversial cloud computing contract between Israel, Google and Amazon. The leaked documents reveal dozens of deals Cisco worked on with Israeli government clients in 2026, many tagged as 'AI' deals.
Internal backlash
Cisco faced internal turmoil over its role in the war. Bridge to Humanity, a group of current and former workers, condemned the company's military ties as 'a shocking and complete contradiction of values' that made it 'no different to an arms company'.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found reasonable cause to believe Cisco created a hostile work environment for Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees following the 2023 Hamas attacks, though Cisco disputed these findings.
Crisis response
When technical failures threatened Israeli intelligence operations, Cisco activated senior staff and mobilized multiple internal teams to fix the bugs. The company sent staff to meet with Israel's secretive Sapir unit, which moved intelligence operations underground after the October 2023 attacks.
Cisco billed its damage control effort as a 'customer success story' after restoring the client's confidence. The documents reveal Cisco referred to its client as the Israel Intelligence Force, responsible for 'delivering critical network infrastructure for various intelligence departments within the Israeli Ministry of Defense'.
Investors have called on Cisco to commission an independent human rights assessment of its military business, with shareholders set to vote on the proposal at an upcoming general meeting. As one digital rights organizer noted, 'Cisco is at the foundational level facilitating all of these atrocity crimes'.
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