The Former Israeli Spies Building AI Systems At Global Tech Companies

Dozens of former members of Israel’s Unit 8200 - a secretive cyber warfare team accused of building the AI systems that helped enable the Gaza genocide - are now building AI systems for the world’s biggest tech and AI companies.

Former Unit 8200 members who specialise in AI, machine learning and big data are working in AI teams at Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Open AI and Nvidia, a dedicated AI company vying to be the biggest in the world.

This Unit 8200-to-big-tech pipeline is global, with former spies specialising in AI based in locations around the world, from San Francisco to New York, Spain to Switzerland, London to Jerusalem.

Additionally I found that acclaimed leaders in the field of AI - men and women working for AI start-ups or heralded by corporate media as the next generation of AI - are former unit 8200 members.

Furthermore, many of these people I identified have expressed support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Conversely, I searched hundreds of these profiles and couldn’t find a single one who voiced opposition to Israel’s mass murder or even sadness for the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

The basis for this investigation was a trawl of Linked In profiles using an account I was provided that enabled me to see the full profiles and details of these people, being as it was within three degrees of separation to many key figures.

The names here, which might be best described as a network, are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of former Unit 8200 working at global tech companies. However I focused on those with a specialisation in AI and machine/deep learning because of Israel’s use of AI to generate the kill lists which marked tens of thousands of Palestinians for assassination.

Advocacy groups have also said AI and machine learning is central to the architecture of occupation and apartheid established before the genocidal Gaza campaign, from the use of facial recognition technology, AI-directed guns at checkpoints, to spy apps known as ‘Blue Wolf’ and ‘Red Wolf’. Unit 8200 also collects financial, sexual and other information on Palestinians, practices which led a handful of former members to label unethical when they spoke out more than a decade ago.

Google

Let’s start at Google, where former Israeli spy Ilai Soloducho helps lead Generative AI for Google Labs at Google’s Mountain View campus in California. Not only a former Unit 8200 member, Soloducho also worked at Peter Thiel’s Palantir and before that worked directly for Benjamin Netanyahu, a clear example of the Israeli-spy-to-big tech pipeline. In his profile Soloducho says his work at Palantir was focused on “helping western governments and Fortune 500 companies do their most important work.”

Google’s head of global research, focused on machine learning, algorithms and AI is former IDF air force pilot Yossi Matias, a well known figure in AI and tech circles. His son, Michael Matias, spent five years in Unit 8200 and founded teams to ‘integrate machine learning and deep learning’. Michael, like his dad, is based in California and is the CEO of AI and cybersecurity start-up Clarity. Michael’s work at 8200 undoubtedly helped automate the genocide.

Omer Levy, a California-based research scientist at Google Deepmind, the company’s dedicated AI arm, spent four years in Unit 8200 in the 2000s and prior to Google worked at Microsoft and Meta, while Idan Shenfield Amit, who spent four and a half years at unit 8200, is a researcher at Google Deepmind in Boston. He previously worked in machine learning roles at GM and Samsung.

Lior Belenki a research engineer at Google Deepmind in Seattle spent six years in Unit 8200 up to the year 2013. Yoel Zeldes is also a research engineer focusing on AI systems to process language at Deepmind. He spent more than six years in Unit 8200 and is based in Jerusalem.

Dror Ayalon, a group product manager ‘turning AI research into products’ at Google in New York, spent three years in Unit 8200 in the 2000s and the head of AI security at Google Cloud, is Assaf Namer. Namer, based at Mountain View, was in Unit 8200 in the 90s.

Karen Vilenko is a software engineer working for Google Deepmind in Switzerland. She spent a little over two years in Unit 8200, from 2012-2014.

Also at Google is David Kadouch, AI product lead in Israel. Kadouch, who says he is ‘problem solving for the benefit of humanity,’ served in Unit 8200 in the 90s. In defence of the genocide he said Israel avoids civilian deaths and celebrated an Israeli soldier who said he wrote the code for an app while participating in war crimes at Khan Younis.

Another interesting character at Google is Ben Limonchik, a senior software engineer building Google’s ChatGPT rival Gemini. Before Google he was working on AI at Palantir. While he doesn’t have Unit 8200 in his profile, he likes posts promoting the mass rape hoax used to justify the genocide from figures like Bari Weiss and is connected to former unit 8200 members.

ChatGPT (an OpenAI product) and Gemini have both been accused of producing biased results when asked about Israel-Palestine. ChatGPT has been found to generate different results when you ask it if Palestinians and Israelis deserve to be free, and when you ask Gemini why Netanyahu was issued with an ICC warrant it refuses to answer.

Someone I believe is related to Limonchik, possibly even his brother, is Shai Limonchik who works for Anthropic, which is competing to be the biggest AI-dedicated company in the world. Like Ben, Shai does not have Unit 8200 on his profile but is a dual US-Israeli citizen and is connected to former Unit 8200 members.

Meta

Over at Meta we start in Madrid, Spain, where Doron Vainrub is a senior data engineer focused on AI systems. Chillingly, he says that during his nearly 3 years in Unit 8200 he designed and developed a big data ‘solution’ that ‘shortened a human decision making process from several days to a couple of hours.’ This is entirely consistent with the approach of the ‘Lavender’ AI system that has automated the mass murder of Palestinians.

Nadav Benedek works as an AI and machine learning researcher for Meta (Facebook) in the US. He spent four years in Unit 8200 from 1999 to 2003.

Oshri Halimi works for Meta Reality Labs in San Francisco, the division of Meta focused on augmented reality. She spent two years in Unit 8200 working on algorithms and AI. Before Meta she worked for Google and IBM in the US.

Uriel Singer an AI research scientist at Meta spent more than seven years in Unit 8200 working on AI research. He doesn’t provide any details, but again, we can assume he helped lay the groundwork for mass murder.

Shelly Sheynin is also an AI research scientist at Meta and she spent a couple of years in Unit 8200 during the mid 2010s. Uri Patish an AI researcher at Meta spent 4 years in Unit 8200 and nearly seven at The Pentagon. Meta machine learning engineer Efrat Ravid spent 3 years in the unit.

Maya Bechler-Speicher, another AI research scientist at Meta and a Unit 8200 alumni, serving a little over 2 years in the early 2010s. She ‘loved’ posts about the ‘fighters we owe so much.’

Apple

Jonathan Laserson is a deep learning researcher for Apple based in Israel and former Unit 8200 member. He suggested in a post that there should be no ceiling on the number of innocent Palestinians Israel should murder to defeat Hamas.

Avital Kleiman is a machine learning algorithm engineer at Apple in Israel and she spent more than six years in Unit 8200, leaving in 2021 to take up her role at Apple.

Michael Sehaik spent 3 years in Unit 8200 in the late 2010s ‘automating tasks to free up man hours’ before moving to Apple.

Microsoft

Ben Sapirstein is a machine learning specialist at Microsoft who spent more than five years in Unit 8200 focused on linguistics. I couldn’t help notice in his previous job for a healthcare company in Germany a grim echo of what his work at 8200 enabled. He says he ‘used AI technology to simulate bone deformation.’

Irad Dor, a partner at Microsoft’s venture capital investment fund M12, is a well known Israeli investor who backs AI and machine learning start-ups. He spent over 3 years in Unit 8200 in the 1990s.

Nvidia

In late 2024 Nvidia became not just the largest AI company but the largest company in the world on paper, with a valuation of almost $3.5 trillion. A dedicated AI chip maker, it employs a significant number of Unit 8200 alumni, in Israel and the US. Israel media has said ‘Nvidia’s path to success runs through Israel.’ Searching ‘unit 8200 and Nvidia’ generates more than 150 results on LinkedIn. The company is stacked with former Unit 8200 members, which, as the world’s biggest maker of the hardware that powers global AI systems, has some obvious and troubling implications for how these systems operate.

I’ll pick out a few of the most senior people I found.

Dror Aharoni is the director of chip design at Nvidia and he spent five and a half years in Unit 8200, from 1999 to 2004. Ronen Dar is one of Nvidia’s system software leads. He spent nearly four years in Unit 8200, from 1999 to 2003, coinciding with Aharoni’s stint. He took up his role at Nvidia after an AI company he co-founded alongside fellow Unit 8200 alum Omri Geller was bought by Nvidia last year. Geller spent more than seven years in Unit 8200, from 2010 to 2017, but is a little more coy about it than most. On his profile he calls the spy group an ‘elite technological unit’ where he worked as a ‘technologist.’ This is how 8200 refers to itself, so it is obvious what he’s referring to. Nvidia, via Geller and Dar’s company, also volunteered making meals for the IDF.

Elad Gu at Nvidia is a former spy in two IDF cyber teams, 8200 and Unit 81, another Israeli cyber warfare division. Gu spent over seven years in the IDF across the two units. Some former spies at Unit 81 were positively profiled in the tech media a few years ago for their roles in leading tech start-up companies.

Finally, Arabic speaker Najeeb Nabwani is a senior deep learning researcher at Nvidia and recent alum of Unit 8200, leaving in 2022, where he focused on AI systems for language.

Amazon

At Amazon we find Ofir Zigelman, a senior manager in Amazon’s AI team based in New York. He is also the vice president of the Harvard club of Israel, a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge in England and from 2006 to 2011 worked directly for Benjamin Netanyahu. He spent four years in Unit 8200, leaving in 2006 to go and work for Netanyahu.

Open AI

Locating info on 8200 alum at Open AI, the maker of ChatGPT was harder to come by but I did identify Raz Goan, an AI researcher based in Boston who spent three years in Unit 8200.

Zack Dvey-Aharon

Dvey-Aharon was recently named one of the 100 most influential people in AI by Time Magazine. The CEO of a New York-based healthcare start-up, Dvey-Aharon is also an openly genocidal Zionist. His profile says he was a software engineer in the IDF (which likely means Unit 8200, or possibly Unit 81), and he regularly reacts to genocidal content on LinkedIn. He ‘celebrated’ a comment on a picture showing before and after scenes of destruction in Jabalia refugee camp saying “well that didn’t go as you’d hoped I guess” and ‘liked’ a picture of a destroyed mosque in Gaza celebrating Hanukkah. He also liked a post about Canada’s Conservative leader Pierre Poliviere saying Israel bombing Iran would be a gift to humanity.

Gila Kamhi

Gila Kamhi is chief AI officer at Intel and was named number 1 by AI magazine in a top 10 list of AI officers in 2023. While she doesn’t list Unit 8200 on her profile, she is a radical Israeli Zionist, liking posts that praise the IDF and ‘celebrating’ others repeating the rape hoax and condemning the UN.

Ora Levit

Linked In’s head of core growth for its premium service and a former Unit 8200 member. Levit is not in an AI focused role, but documenting to demonstrate there are few tech platforms without a Unit 8200 influence.

Meir Klein

A twenty year Unit 8200 veteran and mastermind, Klein is an AI and big data expert at California start-up JFrog. His profile has a large amount of info about his work at 8200 which ended in 2021 where he was the chief data architect. At 8200 he built ‘peta-byte scale big data infrastructure’ and ‘production grade data pipelines enabling information retrieval.’ He also mentions working on joint ventures with ‘civilian hi-tech companies.’

The Unit 8200 AI Pipeline

This investigation shows that former Israeli spies who helped construct the architecture of occupation, apartheid and genocide are deeply embedded in the biggest tech companies in the world. After constructing an architecture for genocide, these former spies are now constructing the AI infrastructure that will shape our societies in fundamental ways.

For the tech companies themselves the presence of so many of these individuals in key roles should raise serious ethical questions. And we should all be worried about AI systems with the capacity to restructure our world being engineered by the same people responsible for engineering psychopathic AI that generates indiscriminate kill lists. AI that permitted the murder of 100 civilians with every strike. AI systems jokily titled ‘Where’s Daddy?’ that relied on the use of dumb bombs that flattened entire neighbourhoods. Unit 8200 was also behind the pager attack that killed and blinded civilians and children in Lebanon.

I’ve identified only a fraction of the Unit 8200 ecosystem that is bleeding out into our world and onto our phones. There are many more people to identify and layers of cooperation, not least the former Unit 8200 members at venture capital funds making key decisions about which nascent technologies to back.

While the temporary ceasefire in Gaza will provide massive relief for the Palestinians, a temporary ceasefire is just that. Israel’s architecture of occupation and apartheid that enabled the genocide is well and truly intact, and Unit 8200 plays a massive part in that architecture.

Many former Unit 8200 spies have no shame about listing their service on LinkedIn because the west has for decades legitimatised Israeli occupation, apartheid and now genocide. Unit 8200 even has an alumni page on LinkedIn. These people show no shame because they have never been shamed.

In a just world not only would the role of Unit 8200 as a pipeline for former spies to land key jobs at big tech and AI companies come to an end, these people would be prosecuted for war crimes.