Internal documents leaked by employees reveal that tech giant Cisco actively moved to preserve and expand its business contracts with the Israeli military and military intelligence services during the war in Gaza, even as system failures threatened critical operations and worker protests roiled the company.
A confidential draft memo from September 2025 indicates that approximately a year into the conflict, the digital networks of Israel’s military intelligence community suffered severe, multi-hour outages and repeated system crashes. Built-in debugging mechanisms failed while digital infrastructure updates were underway, undermining the confidence of Israeli intelligence agencies in Cisco. The memo warned that repeated blackouts during a period of national conflict had deeply impacted customer sentiment and severely disrupted critical military operations.
The documents were leaked by workers outraged by the company’s ongoing military ties three years into the war in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 70,000 Palestinians. Although Cisco is globally known for manufacturing the foundational hardware of the internet—including routers, servers, and data communications systems—its longstanding work for the Israeli security state has drawn relatively little public scrutiny. Internal records from 2025 show that Cisco's contracts with Israeli military intelligence alone generated approximately $67 million in business over a three-year span.
To repair its relationship with Israeli military authorities, Cisco deployed senior personnel and mobilized multiple internal technical teams over several months. Company staff conducted on-site visits under extreme security conditions caused by the active war to meet directly with Sapir, a secretive Israeli military unit tasked with relocating the country's intelligence infrastructure underground following the October 7, 2023 attacks. After repairing system bugs and training personnel, Cisco successfully returned Sapir to normal operations between 2024 and the summer of 2025, later presenting the damage-control effort internally as a "customer success story."
The leaked files also show that earlier this year, Splunk, a Cisco subsidiary specializing in machine-generated data processing and analytics, pitched to join Project Nimbus. Project Nimbus is a controversial cloud computing contract between the Israeli government, Google, and Amazon.
Cisco's internal records refer to its primary intelligence client as the Israel Intelligence Force (IIF), responsible for providing critical network infrastructure across intelligence departments within the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The designation appears to correspond to Aman, the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence directorate. Technical workers familiar with the incidents noted that the repeated network blackouts compromised intelligence forces' access to vital military data.
An employee organization named Bridge to Humanity, comprising current and former Cisco workers opposing the firm's role in the Gaza war, condemned the company's actions. In a statement, the group asserted that Cisco's work with Israeli intelligence represents a complete contradiction of the ethical values the company projects to employees, customers, investors, and the public, accusing the corporation of becoming an instrument of genocide. The workers noted that Cisco had avoided intense scrutiny by selling hardware and software, but argued its direct support makes it functionally equivalent to an arms manufacturer supplying bombs and fighter jets.
Bridge to Humanity members further alleged that leadership consistently dismissed worker concerns regarding the war while quietly taking extreme measures behind the scenes to preserve and expand commercial ties with the Israeli military to avoid losing revenue.
The internal workplace climate at Cisco has also faced regulatory oversight. Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found reasonable cause to believe that following the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war, Cisco maintained a hostile work environment marked by racist rhetoric that infringed upon the rights of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim employees. Cisco has stated that it disagrees with the EEOC's findings and remains committed to equal opportunity employment.
Watchdog groups tracking corporate involvement in the region note that Cisco has long supplied technology supporting surveillance over Palestinians. Earlier this year, Drop Site News cited internal Cisco documents highlighting that technology investment had become as essential to the military as aircraft, tanks, and traditional combat tools, with one company presentation featuring the phrase, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."
Eric Sype, a U.S.-based organizer with the Palestinian digital rights non-profit 7amleh, observed that major technology firms are increasingly expanding military contract revenues and transforming into de facto weapons manufacturers. Sype stressed that while cloud providers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon face heavy public scrutiny, their software services depend entirely on the physical hardware and network infrastructure provided by Cisco, which fundamentally facilitates the operations taking place on the ground.
Cisco did not respond to requests for comment regarding the leaked documents. A spokesperson for the Israeli military declined to comment on specific corporate contracts or services, stating that the Israel Defense Forces relies on services from numerous companies to fulfill its ongoing operational objectives. Meanwhile, Cisco faces growing pressure from an investor group demanding an independent human rights assessment of its military business, with shareholders scheduled to vote on the proposal at an upcoming general meeting this month.
