Cisco deepened its business relationship with Israeli military intelligence during the Gaza war, according to internal documents obtained by The Guardian UK Business. The company's Israeli military intelligence contracts generated about $67m in business over three years, according to a 2025 document reviewed by the outlet. As the war in Gaza continued and international organisations began referring to Israel's actions as genocide, Cisco pursued opportunities to preserve and expand these relationships, the leaked papers show.
The tech giant faced technical problems with systems serving Israeli military intelligence about a year into the war, with major multi-hour outages and repeated crashes undermining confidence in Cisco as a network provider. A confidential September 2025 memo drafted by Cisco, obtained by the outlet, warned that the outages "severely impacted critical operations" during the conflict and threatened the customer relationship. Rather than step back, Cisco activated senior staff to salvage what it called a "critical" account, sent teams to meet on site with a secretive Israeli military unit known as Sapir, and documented the effort as a "customer success story" after fixing the problems between 2024 and summer 2025.
The leaked documents also reveal that Splunk, a Cisco-owned platform, pitched to join Project Nimbus, the controversial cloud computing contract between the Israeli government, Google and Amazon, earlier this year. The documents detail dozens of deals Cisco worked on with various Israeli government clients in 2026, many tagged as artificial intelligence deals. This expansion occurred as mass killing of civilians in Gaza was extensively documented and as Cisco itself was torn by internal turmoil over its role in the war.
Members of Bridge to Humanity, a group of current and former Cisco workers, called the company's work with Israeli intelligence a "shocking and complete contradiction of values" that Cisco sells to employees and customers. The group said Cisco, which pitches itself as an ethics-driven company, had become "an instrument of genocide" and that the company's role made it "no different to an arms company that is supplying the bombs and fighter jets". Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found reasonable cause to believe Cisco oversaw a hostile work environment rife with racist rhetoric targeting Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees following October 2023, though Cisco disagreed with the findings.
Cisco did not respond to requests for comment. An Israeli military spokesperson said the Israel Defense Forces is assisted by services from a range of companies but does not comment on contracts or services provided by other entities. Shareholders are expected to vote this month on a proposal requiring Cisco to commission an independent human rights assessment of its business with the Israeli military.
For investors in Cisco, the disclosure of expanded military contracts during the Gaza war creates reputational risk as the company faces shareholder pressure and employee activism over its role in the conflict.