by Sebs Solomon, Unlimited Hangout:
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The Palestinian population is intimately familiar with how new technological innovations are first weaponized against them–ranging from electric fences and unmanned drones to trap people in Gaza—to the facial recognition software monitoring Palestinians in the West Bank. Groups like Amnesty International have called Israel an Automated Apartheid and repeatedly highlight stories, testimonies, and reports about cyber-intelligence firms, including the infamous NSO Group (the Israeli surveillance company behind the Pegasus software) conducting field tests and experiments on Palestinians.
When discussing Gaza or the West Bank, it’s critical to understand that Israel’s achievements in AI and overall technological edge is perpetuated by the use of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other warfare technologies that are first tested in Palestine and the occupied territories before being exported abroad. Reports have highlighted:
“testing and deployment of AI surveillance and predictive policing systems in Palestinian territories. In the occupied West Bank, Israel increasingly utilizes facial recognition technology to monitor and regulate the movement of Palestinians…Israeli military leaders described AI as a significant force multiplier, allowing the IDF to use autonomous robotic drone swarms to gather surveillance data, identify targets, and streamline wartime logistics.”
The Palestinian towns and villages near Israeli settlements have been described as laboratories for security solutions companies to experiment their technologies on Palestinians before marketing them to places like Colombia, India, and Mexico. Since at least 2012, NSO Group’s controversial surveillance products–which allow users to penetrate any cell phone without the target’s awareness–have been public knowledge. The debates around “privacy” and “owning your data” seem rather asinine considering all of the open-source information pertaining to the Intel Management Engine’s backdoor capabilities or its Memory Sinkhole vulnerabilities. It’s also worth noting that Intel, a California-based tech juggernaut, considers itself “an Israeli company as much as a US company.”
A recent article in The Intercept asserts that since NSO Group was blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2021, their recent effort to aid the Israeli government in finding Israeli citizens in Gaza, seems like an attempt “to rehabilitate its image in this crisis.” While it’s positive that The Intercept is highlighting NSO Group’s attempt to rebuild its public image, the nature of the alleged “blunder” itself is worth questioning considering Hamas was able to charge into Tel Aviv by slashing through the barricades at a border that’s, supposedly, embedded with a myriad of sophisticated surveillance software and devices (including NSO’s Pegasus spyware). Israel is assumed to have one of, if not the most, advanced border surveillance system with cameras and ground motion sensors. Additionally, Pegasus is presumed to be one of the Israeli tech sector’s most highly sought-after products that’s been sold to intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world.
According to a Washington Post article:
“Hamas fighters neutralized long-range cameras, sophisticated sensors and remote-control weapons — a tactic known inside the group as the ‘blinding plan’ — to breach the high-tech fence…the Post reconstructed the attack by analyzing hundreds of videos and photos posted online, including visuals filmed on Oct. 7 and during preparations by Hamas fighters.”
It’s not clear exactly how the Post “reconstructed” the attack; perhaps they were given access to footage and geolocation data and were able to create a computer model of what could have taken place at the border. The Post also reported on the New York Times story that the Israeli government had information (for over a year) about a planned Hamas attack on Israeli territory. They appear to have ignored warnings from their own and neighboring intelligence services about Hamas’ “blinding plan” which has now led to the Israeli military and tech companies racing to “innovate” and develop new hi-tech weapons, advanced surveillance systems, and AI that will utterly destroy the Gaza strip so that these same forces may then rebuild (or “Build Back Better”) a demilitarized and “deradicalized” Gaza.
Just as the Israeli military and its contractors attempt to perfect their surveillance and AI systems, it seems like the Israeli government hopes to crystalize its “automated apartheid” through the tokenization and privatization of various industries and establishing a technocratic government in Gaza. Much of the groundwork for this was developed and planned out by the Trump Administration. Recently, crypto companies with close ties to Netanyahu and the digital currency advocates selling pipe dreams of “decentralization” to people in Palestine (and also the Global South) are picking up where the Trump administration left off.
Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” Woes & Jared Kushner’s Bahrain Blowout
The Trump administration’s Israel-Palestine “solution,” known formally as the Peace to Prosperity plan, was engineered by Israeli government insiders and needed to be implemented by Likud Party affiliates in Israel. As a result, it was dead on arrival given its one-sided nature. As part of the plan, Donald Trump tapped an Israeli crypto start-up, Orbs, to help his administration leverage smart contracts and blockchain technology for social impact projects in order to bring “verifiable trust, transparency, and external auditability.” In 2018, Orbs raised over $133 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) and, in 2021, partnered with Binance to launch a “DeFi accelerator” (to promote innovation in decentralized finance). Orbs was built as a public blockchain designed to help governments iron out any bureaucratic challenges from migrant identification to tracking aid funds.
Netta Korin, a partner at Orbs and founder of its associated Hexa Foundation, was one of the Israeli business executives who attended the Bahrain Conference hosted by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner (more on that shortly). Hexa Foundation works on projects involving “identification for refugees, credentials wallets, using blockchain to track aid funds and fund traceability for employment in politically unstable areas of the world.” She was previously an advisor to General Yoav Mordechai, from the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and her husband was an aide to Moshe Kahlon, from the Israeli Ministry of Finance. Korin got her start on Wall Street as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers where she worked under Ron Lubash, founder of Markstone Capital Group. Lubash’s co-founder, Elliott Broidy pled guilty in a pension scandal involving the New York Retirement Fund that Broidy arranged to invest $250 million in Markstone Capital Partners. In 2020, Broidy was convicted for failing to register as a foreign agent on behalf of China and Malaysia. He was later pardoned by Donald Trump.
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