[News] Apple buys Israeli ‘pre-speech’ tech firm implicated in Gaza genocide
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Feb 16 10:35:25 EST 2026
The world’s second-largest tech company just acquired a military-linked
Israeli startup that uses “facial skin micromovements” to anticipate
what users will say before they speak.
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Apple buys Israeli ‘pre-speech’ tech firm implicated in Gaza genocide
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By ¡Do Not Panic!
The Grayzone <https://substack.com/@thegrayzone> and Nate Bear
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Feb 16, 2026
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*The world’s second-largest tech company just acquired a
military-linked Israeli startup that uses “facial skin
micromovements” to anticipate what users will say before they speak.*
/This article was originally published
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¡Do Not Panic!/
Tech giant Apple has quietly paid nearly $2 billion for a “pre-speech”
tech company whose employees helped Israel commit genocide in Gaza.
In the second-biggest deal in its history, Apple paid this money for a
company that doesn’t have a product, doesn’t have any revenues and whose
website is a single page containing 15 words.
The company, Q.ai, is developing sensors which map the imperceptible
movements of a human face to determine the words someone is thinking
before they’re spoken. They call it “silent speech,” or “pre-speech” —
and it appears to be exactly as sinister as it sounds.
Q.ai was founded by Aviad Maizels, Avi Barliya and Yonatan Wexler, all
of whom honed their skills by testing technologies of apartheid on
Palestinians. Maizels is a former commander of Unit 81, the IDF division
which builds Israel’s offensive cyber weapons. Barliya, according to his
LinkedIn
<https://substack.com/redirect/3c1eda0a-9eac-4167-aaae-3adec6f7c37b?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>,
was an intelligence officer in the Israeli air force, while Wexler is a
former Unit 8200 agent.
*Apple’s genocide intake*
In a blog post
<https://substack.com/redirect/af482adb-27a7-436a-a228-206677ca61a9?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>announcing
the deal, Tom Hulme, an executive at Google Ventures, one of the
company’s early investors, revealed that 30% of Q.ai’s more than 100
staff were called up to participate in the genocide of Gaza.
This admission means dozens of people implicated in genocidal acts who
served under the political command of Yoav Gallant, an ICC indicted war
criminal, are now Apple employees.
It should be a huge scandal. The biggest company in the US, one of the
world’s most recognizable names, has folded into its staff dozens of
people who served in a military during the period it committed genocide,
according to all
<https://substack.com/redirect/e41032b5-7ef9-4131-ba7d-4068f9a7b148?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>of
the world’s most acclaimed rights experts.
But every single mainstream article which covered news of the deal, from
Reuters
<https://substack.com/redirect/5990d12e-7538-40b9-a138-d4ac5f95cf57?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>to
FT
<https://substack.com/redirect/951b1327-1006-4bd8-acb5-c8d79c5992e4?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>,
ignored this fact. Mainstream coverage also ignored a number of other
extremely cogent elements to the story, including the nature of the deal
and the technology itself.
*Apple has paid two billion dollars for something that barely appears to
exist.*
Q.ai’s**website
<https://substack.com/redirect/89a14a85-4d16-4f7f-b738-2a02255eadff?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>consists
of just 15 words. To find out exactly what the company does you have to
look beyond the press releases to the patents Q.ai and its founders have
filed.
And these patents read like plot lines from the bleakest dystopian futures.
*Sensing silent speech*
One filing
<https://substack.com/redirect/578c338a-43e7-4bfb-ab9b-748a29f2e18b?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>details
technology capable of “determining an emotional state of an individual
based on facial skin micromovements.” The same filing says the
technology could be used “to identify a user based on heart-rate and
breathing-rate.” Another filing
<https://substack.com/redirect/baddc78e-36ef-45dc-945f-e15266695086?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>says
Q.ai’s software “synthesizes speech in response to words articulated
silently by the test subject.”
Q.ai’s technology centers around “silent speech.”
This is the idea that before we vocalize words and move our mouths to
emit sounds, our brain has already sent signals to muscles in our throat
and face determining what we’re going to say. Q.ai claims to have
invented infrared sensors that can pick up these pre-speech micro-movements.
One filing
<https://substack.com/redirect/788370e9-edeb-4b05-a542-e061c7cabfc9?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>talks
about a “sensing device configured to fit an ear of a user, with an
optical sensing head which senses light reflected from the face and
outputs a signal in response. Processing circuitry processes the signal
to generate a speech output.”
Tech bloggers have suggested Apple has bought the company to enable
non-verbal control of an iPhone and other devices via its airpod
earphones or smart glasses. An annotated diagram included with the
patent shows a person wearing glasses and an earpiece integrated with
the technology.
<https://substack.com/redirect/f747b8e7-ad1c-4bbf-a819-b84058fc0e9f?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>
Indeed, Apple is no stranger to adopting the technologies of Israeli
apartheid, and in fact the company is extremely familiar with Maizels
himself.
In 2013, Apple bought Maizels’s first company, PrimeSense, a developer
of 3D sensing technology. PrimeSense technology went on to become the
foundation for Apple’s Face ID system on its newer iPhone and iPad models.
Nonetheless, two billion dollars for a non-existent technology and a
three-year old company, is unprecedented. What isn’t unprecedented,
however, is a US tech giant overpaying for an Israeli company.
*Overpriced Israeli tech*
Last year, Google bought Israeli cybersecurity Wiz for $32 billion,
which, at 64 times Wiz’s annual sales, was widely seen as an inflated
<https://substack.com/redirect/60391656-3c63-4ed7-8f52-8d2a371a43d2?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>price
and far in excess of the sales-to-valuation ratio for similar companies.
At this price, however, Israel received a huge $5 billion tax windfall.
At the time, Zionists crowed it would help the country buy more
warplanes and missiles to commit genocide.
<https://substack.com/redirect/bcbf994f-4a47-48e1-9396-478999bac1a3?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>
The deal for Q.ai, while a lot smaller, will still generate significant
tax income for Israel’s struggling economy.
And Israel is critical to Apple.
The company has a large R&D campus
<https://substack.com/redirect/8e0efd14-1b03-49ca-80ad-1098b14408a9?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>in
the country, its second-biggest outside the US, into which large numbers
of Unit 8200 and Unit 81 graduates are funneled. Apple CEO Tim Cook is a
devoted Zionist, has visited Israel on numerous occasions, and in 2018
received an award
<https://substack.com/redirect/7b3868ea-c9ea-415f-9065-f1c05f7ab346?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>from
Zionist lobby group the ADL for his efforts to censor anti-Israel
speech. Apple has made good on that promise over the last two years,
sacking staff
<https://substack.com/redirect/f0474c6a-c4fa-4dc6-b53d-71b055a81420?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>for
expressing pro-Palestine, anti-genocide views. Cook has never spoken
about Gaza.
The price for a ghost company with a few patents, then, looks as much
about politics as it does about technology.
That’s not to say Q.ai’s technology /won’t /be commercialized for
consumer applications. It probably will be. And if the tech is realized,
the implications for privacy and data collection are frightening.
As are the security state and military applications.
*A pre-crime future*
A few days after the Q.ai deal, the head of neurotechnology at Israel’s
directorate of defense research and development, the country’s
equivalent to the US’s DARPA program, gave her first-ever interview
<https://substack.com/redirect/1ace246c-daf5-4ee2-936e-28b28220a248?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>to
Israeli media. In the interview she referenced Q.ai and said the Israeli
military is working on similar technology. The US has a DARPA project
known as Silent Talk
<https://substack.com/redirect/21790fa6-9642-4f35-a43d-35670d0f62fd?j=eyJ1IjoiNDg0OWljIn0.Y6K1LMhdrJlQZgVGsgH3ZN_uOH6pr27RwbiXoo1LXXA>which
is also working to develop pre-speech sensing and non-verbal control
technologies.
Once the technology is developed, and pre-speech established as a
legitimate biological human function, how far behind will pre-crime be?
Given the frenzied efforts we’ve seen to shut down and criminalize
criticism of Israel under the guise of antisemitism, one can easily
imagine a future of pre-speech sensing technology being rolled out to
identify would-be critics of Israel. Or the US. Or Europe. Or
imperialism in general.
One can imagine it now: “Based on our silent speech detector we have
determined you were going to say something hateful or antisemitic or
un-American and are therefore under arrest.”
The most dystopian technologies continue to flow out of Israel. And they
continue to flow because Israel is empowered by the US and Europe to
maintain a system of apartheid built upon invasive and authoritarian
technologies of control.
It is therefore no surprise that the creators of Q.ai are veterans of
Israel’s genocidal military security state, or that the largest company
in the US sees these technologies as essential to its AI future.
A guest post by
Nate Bear
<https://substack.com/@donotpanic?utm_campaign=guest_post_bio&utm_medium=email>
Empire, tech, power, capitalism, society
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