A US-based digital communications company that provides technologies to the Israeli military, police, and prisons, and to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Cisco Systems, the world’s largest networking company, makes storage hardware (servers), telecommunications equipment, and Internet of Things (IoT) products. Its subsidiaries, products, and brands include Duo Security, Jabber, Jasper, Meraki, OpenDNS, Silicon One, and WebEx.
As one of the main providers of networking hardware for the Israeli military, Cisco is potentially implicated in the mass killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them unarmed civilians, as part of Israel's 2023-2025 genocidal war on Gaza.
The Israeli Military
Over the last decade, Cisco has been one of the leading providers of servers to the Israeli military. In 2017, it was selected by the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) to replace Hewlett Packard Enterprise as the sole provider of servers for the Israeli military and other security forces. Cisco Israel’s CEO stated at the time that this contract “is integral to [the company's] commitment to the State of Israel.” The contract was initially valued at a minimum of $250 million, paid for by the U.S. government through its Foreign Military Sales program.
During the five years of the contract, the Israeli military established its largest ever data center, called David’s Citadel. Located underground in a military base in the Naqab/Negev, it integrates the military’s “most operational” systems, including hundreds of combat, intelligence, and command and control systems. The project was implemented by Israeli company Rad-Bynet using Cisco hardware.
In 2023, Dell was selected to replace Cisco as the main provider of servers for the Israeli military. However, the military continues to buy Cisco servers, as is revealed by an IMOD procurement database. It shows that within three months, between November 2023 and January 2024, IMOD purchased Cisco servers worth a total of almost $2 million in eight different contracts. This is likely an underestimate, as this database only discloses unclassified contracts that were awarded without a tender process.
Following the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Gaza Strip required unprecedented computing power. The Israeli military took several steps to address this problem, and it is likely that the urgent procurement of Cisco servers was a part of this process. This potentially implicates Cisco in the mass killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them unarmed civilians. Cisco technologies likely form the hardware infrastructure that hosts at least some of the databases and AI systems (The Gospel, Lavender, and Where's Daddy?) that the Israeli military developed to generate targets at unprecedented scale with minimal human intervention.
Cisco also provides the Israeli military with communication tools. Since 2020, the company has been providing Israel’s military with its Unified Communications System, which centralizes data, voice, and video communications, and enables this information to be shared among different military units. This system reportedly “improves situational awareness and accelerates operational decision-making in the military.” As of 2020, several dozen such systems were used by the Israeli military. The Israeli military has also been using Cisco’s Webex video conferencing since 2023.
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas' 7 October 2023 attacks, as Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza, Cisco "supported the development of the digital platform “Israel Rises” of the Home Front Command, a branch of the Israeli military," and "gave grants to its employees who were on reserve duty in the Israeli Military," as documented by Who Profits.
Cisco employees have organized and raised concerns over these activities and the company's other relations with Israel, but they have been met with internal silencing, harassment, and discrimination. In December 2024, they filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the California Labor Commissioner, and the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Cisco violated their "rights to express their political views freely and without threats of retaliation, to work in an environment free of national origin or religious harassment, and to engage in protected activity for purposes of mutual aid and protection."
Israeli Occupation and Police
Since 2018, Cisco has established “digital hubs” in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights through a partnership with the Israeli government, as documented by Who Profits. These “hubs” are government-subsidized co-working spaces designed to help integrate small towns and remote regions into Israel’s high-tech sectors. Five out of a total of 36 operating hubs are located in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and two are located in the occupied Golan Heights, as of September 2023.
Cisco is also involved in the Israeli occupation through supplying technologies to the Jerusalem Municipality's ‘Smart City’ program. According to Who Profits, in 2017, Cisco provided communications equipment and closed-circuit TV cameras to the City of Jerusalem—whose jurisdiction includes occupied East Jerusalem—for its ‘Smart City’ project, a large-scale surveillance project that consists of hundreds of cameras equipped with facial recognition and is used to track the movements of Palestinians.
Cisco communication systems and software are also used by the Israeli police. In 2022, the Israeli police purchased Cisco communications equipment and software from Israeli IT service management company Matrix IT. Between 2020 and 2021, the Israeli police purchased over $1 million worth of Cisco equipment and software.