[News] Genocide profiteer IBM wins big on EU funding

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/genocide-profiteer-ibm-wins-big-eu-funding> 



  Genocide profiteer IBM wins big on EU funding

David Cronin <https://electronicintifada.net/people/david-cronin> Rights 
and Accountability 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 24 April 
2024

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IBM has a history of doing business with human rights abusers.

SOPA Images/SIPA USA

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to select targets in Gaza during 
the current genocide has garnered many headlines 
<https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/>.

Few who have paid close attention to how Israel tests new technology on 
Palestinians can be surprised. Israel had previously signaled 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/israels-killer-robots-go-display-greek-weapons-fair> 
that its May 2021 attack on Gaza gave it an opportunity to experiment 
<https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/guardian-of-the-walls-the-first-ai-war-669371> 
with AI.

The proper response to those signals would have been to halt any funding 
of AI research involving Israeli firms and institutions. The European 
Union has taken the opposite approach.

In September 2023, the EU authorized a project 
<https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101120218> aimed at realizing a 
future in which collaboration between humans and AI “takes center stage.”

Participants in the project include IBM Israel – a subsidiary of the 
US-based giant.

IBM has a long and ignoble history 
<https://www.whoprofits.org/publications/report/158> of providing 
technology to abusers of human rights. Among its past clients were the 
German government during the Nazi era and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

More recently, IBM has been awarded a series of contracts to run 
technology support centers for the Israeli military. Robotics are a core 
feature of the latest such center.

It is a near certainty that IBM products can be found in Israel’s 
toolbox during the current genocide.

No questions about IBM’s ties to the Israeli military seem to have been 
asked by EU officials before they rubber-stamped the aforementioned 
project in September.

I have seen a copy of an “ethics check” carried out on the project – 
named HumAIne – at the EU’s request.

The exercise was one of box-ticking.

It came to the conclusion that HumAIne had an “exclusive focus on civil 
applications.” The only significant recommendation was that “an 
independent ethics adviser must be appointed with the relevant 
accumulated expertise” so that the project could be monitored.

The recommendation did not address IBM’s connections to Israel’s 
military. It merely referred to “ethical concerns” surrounding the 
project, particularly “the involvement of humans in the evaluation of AI 
systems.”

While HumAIne was signed off by the Brussels bureaucracy before the 
genocidal war on Gaza was declared in October, the EU has okayed 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/eu-signs-huge-number-science-grants-israel-amid-gaza-genocide> 
a huge number of new research grants to Israel since then.

IBM Israel is among the recipients of those new grants. It is taking 
part in a project on data-sharing innovations, which the EU authorized 
<https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101135967> in mid-November.


    “See no evil”

Ignorance is no defense for the EU’s lack of curiosity about IBM and its 
close relationship with the Israeli military. As IBM Israel has received 
<https://dashboard.tech.ec.europa.eu/qs_digit_dashboard_mt/public/sense/app/dc5f6f40-c9de-4c40-8648-015d6ff21342/sheet/3bcd6df0-d32a-4593-b4fa-0f9529c8ffb0/state/analysis/select/Organisation%20PIC/999787343> 
130 EU research grants with a total value of almost $93 million since 
2007, Brussels officials have had ample time to probe the firm’s activities.

That they have chosen not to is symptomatic of a “see no evil” attitude 
which prevails.

In late February, a group of EU staff sent a letter to Johannes Hahn, 
the European commissioner for budget and administration. It expressed 
strong disquiet at how the EU institutions had expressed support for and 
maintained close relations with Israel.

After pointing out that the International Court of Justice had accepted 
<https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf> 
there is a plausible case that Israel is violating the Genocide 
Convention, the letter raised concerns that EU staff could be complicit 
in the Gaza genocide. It urged that the EU’s in-house lawyers prepare 
advice for staff working in or with the Middle East on how they can 
avoid being held liable for complicity in genocide.

Although it is nearly two months since the letter was sent, Hahn has 
still not responded to it.

When I contacted his spokesperson this week, I was told that Hahn “takes 
note” of the letter and “an answer is in preparation.”

The cavalier nature of that brief comment is instructive. Europe’s 
political elite is continuing to caress Israel against the backdrop of a 
holocaust in Gaza.

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