This Is What Genocide Looks Like When Silicon Valley Writes the Brochure
Corporate, tech oligarchs are providing the infrastructure for and profiting off genocide in Gaza. But accountability is closer than you think.
Ramah Kudaimi and Evan Sutton
It’s being called the GREAT Trust. A glossy plan for Gaza’s “redevelopment” that includes solar plants, hospitals and an Elon Musk-branded “Smart Manufacturing Zone.” But, as analysts have suggested, it only works if the people of Gaza are gone.
The slides leaked over a month ago to the Washington Post spell out the game plan: Gazans will be forced to choose between dubious and iniquitous “voluntary” mass relocation or “temporary housing,” while and billionaires get their branded tech playground built on ashes and bones. This is what genocide looks like when Silicon Valley writes the brochure: ethnic cleansing dressed up as innovation.
But this sickening plan by American tech oligarchs to profit off the devastation of Gaza and its people is not the first chapter of their involvement in this conflict. The truth is that many of them have helped drive, been complicit in, or profiteered off the genocide for the last two years, and they seem all too ready to continue that legacy.
Let’s start first with Palantir — Alex Karp and Peter Thiel’s secretive data-defense-tech monopoly. In January 2024, the company held a board meeting in Tel Aviv where CEO Alex Karp announced Palantir was supplying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with “different products than we supplied before” as IDF forces leveled Gaza. At the same time, independent investigations exposed Israel’s AI system “Lavender,” which auto-generated a kill list with tens of thousands of “potential targets”, rubber-stamped in seconds before bombs fell on residential apartment blocks.
While Palantir’s potential role in the “Lavender” AI system is not publicly known, the tech giant sells “decision-making” software built to supercharge machinery of mass killing. While it now rakes in money from Israel’s war, Palantir has contracted with cities like New York and Chicago.
Like it or not, your tax dollars may have helped bankroll a company that is arming the IDF. Now, Palantir and similar tech firms are bringing the tech they’ve honed overseas home to the United States where the Trump administration is using it to target its “enemies.”
On the propaganda front, the numbers are staggering. Human Rights Watch documented over 1,000 cases of Meta silencing peaceful Palestine-related content in just two months. A report by 7amleh showed that millions of posts calling for Gaza’s destruction were left untouched and monetized. At the same time, Israel’s government spent about $45 million on propaganda ads across Google and YouTube — campaigns denying famine, smearing the UN, and laundering the image of an army accused of genocide. These platforms are not neutral. They’re paid accomplices in manufacturing consent for mass killing.
It’s not only tech platforms: traditional media empires are in on it too. David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, now controls CBS and Paramount. Oracle itself is expanding R&D in Israel even as it feeds off massive U.S. government contracts, including health data systems. American tax dollars — turned into fuel for Israel’s war economy. Meanwhile, President Trump recently named Ellison, along with Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and the Murdochs of Fox News, as major players in the TikTok deal. To say the very least, this move has sparked concern around future censorship of the platform that helped expose the atrocities happening in Gaza.
While governments get the majority of attention as the front-of-house players, these corporate tech oligarchs are playing a hugely significant role on the backend. And they are using our tax dollars, our investments, and our data to make it possible. Once we realize that, the avenues for resistance become a lot more clear.
A majority of Americans oppose what is happening in Gaza. A majority of the world opposes it. Despite a “ceasefire” deal made between Hamas and Israel that went into effect on October 10, the Israeli government has continued its attacks which have led to the killing of at least 242 Palestinians and the destruction of 1,500 more buildings. Tech workers themselves are organizing under the banner of No Tech for Apartheid. Yet our pensions, our universities, our cities, and our media keep pouring money and legitimacy into the corporations making this genocide possible. The Right often rants about a shadowy cabal pulling the strings, enriching themselves while propagandizing and fomenting global conflict. In Gaza, here they are. Musk. Thiel. Ellison. Zuckerberg. They are not hiding in the shadows. They are issuing press releases, signing contracts and profiting from genocide and erasure.
We cannot let this stand as the status quo. If we are going to change things, we must ensure they can no longer profit off genocide. And that fight starts with you. Your attention, your data, your investments, are the true profit engines for many of these corporations. Demanding that your union or your employer divest your pension and retirement from companies that do business with Israel can have a big impact. Turning out for local elections that often decide if local governments will contract with companies like Palantir or invest in Tesla. If you’re a student or an alumni of a university with an endowment, demand they divest, just as they did from South African apartheid.
You won’t be able to stop the actions of Netanyahu by yourself. But you can stop sending your tax dollars, tuition money, and retirement savings to the corporations that arm him, launder his propaganda, and envision a Gaza with no Palestinians. We have a lot more power to put a stop to this genocide than we might think. Less than two months ago, reports show Microsoft finally ended the special access to certain tech it provided Israel’s military for three years — technology that was used to execute a massive surveillance program on the Palestinian people and appears to have played a role in coordinating airstrike targeting and bombing of Gaza.
Did this come out of nowhere? Did Microsoft just suddenly have a change of heart? No. It came as a direct result of an investigation and grassroots pressure from workers, advocates, community members, and people like you and me. This major victory was the “first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza,” according to The Guardian. And we are not stopping there.
Because accountability is possible. But not if we decide to sit on our hands. Not if we let them take that power from us. If we let that happen, then genocide will not just be something we watch — it will be something we underwrite.
Ramah Kudaimi is a campaign director at the Action Center on Race & the Economy and previously deputy director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
Evan Sutton is the founder of Firekit Campaigns and a national organizer with #TeslaTakedown.
