From the Great Basin to Gaza: How Nevada’s Data Centers Power a Surveillance Pipeline That Ends at Our Doorstep

The Israeli military’s Orwellian use of artificial intelligence for surveillance, targeting, and execution of attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has been well-documented by journalists, reporters, and activists in Israel and the United States. Less known is the close collaboration between the military and police departments in the United States, which have been quietly adopting tactics pioneered by Israel in their perpetual campaigns in the occupied territories, including US police departments sending their officers to Israel for training. This dynamic, combined with the US’ direct funding of the Israeli military through taxpayer dollars, creates a feedback loop in which the US is effectively funding the real-world experimentation and refinement of AI technology on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military, which then provides models for how the police in the United States can more effectively surveil their own citizens and, especially chillingly, potentially quash dissent. Cities in Nevada, like Reno and Sparks, find themselves at the forefront of this unsettling reality, as developments on both ends of the process (data center construction that powers AI use, and the proliferation of Flock and Axon cameras used for state surveillance) are currently taking place under the sanction of our local governments.

The Generative AI systems that are being used for warfare abroad and surveillance at home require staggering amounts of data storage and energy. In Northern Nevada, data centers can occupy huge swathes of land with footprints larger than the biggest nearby cities, or nestle right into our communities where they can support local police surveillance. Apart from initial construction, they produce few jobs, poison the groundwater, and generate noise pollution that can harm physical and mental health. The Great Basin is so called because the water that enters the Basin does not drain out again – any toxins that leach from the data centers will stay there, despite promises about closed-loop wastewater-based systems. Data centers also facilitate the shadowy nature of private entities that are funded by the government – Palantir, which develops a variety of AI-based surveillance technologies utilized by the US, does not own its own data centers, but rather contracts with companies like Google to hide their exact location.

Much of the processing power generated in these centers is utilized by the Israeli military and surveillance apparatus, which is in turn funded by US aid. The US has sent Israel approximately $174 billion in aid to date, allowing Israel to continuously remain on the cutting edge of surveilling and murdering Palestinians and their other neighbors in the Middle East. Unit 8200 is one of Israel’s cyber warfare units, and it has developed a variety of target identification tools that rely on generative AI to generate lists of potential targets with little or no human intervention or decision-making. Lavender is a system that has been used to generate kill lists. The Gospel is another – one which had its guardrails with respect to target size removed in 2023. These systems rely on a variety of data sources, including facial recognition and data mining through social media and internet use. Unit 8200’s technologies closely mirror those developed by Palantir, such as ELITE – a system used in Operation Black Rose, the DHS surveillance project in Oregon designed to identify and arrest targets for ICE. These similarities should not be surprising – it’s not unusual for key players in Palantir and other private AI technology developers to have close ties with Unit 8200. For those who follow the Epstein files, it’s important to note that Epstein was deeply involved in Israeli intelligence – and therefore can be connected to the burgeoning projects of surveillance in the US – representing the fusion of private interests and military operations. As sinister as these systems are, it’s essential to recognize that they are fundamentally faulty: Palantir also developed the Maven Smart System, which was used to target the school in Iran where 120 children and 37 adults were bombed to death based on faulty, out-of-date information. The lack of human decision-making contributes to violence on false premises.

Now we are witnessing the disturbing yet unsurprising development of surveillance technology developed in Israel with US aid money returning to US cities. Flock Cameras and the systems that support them are an increasingly notorious example. Flock claims that its own cameras function only as Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), but they allow police departments to connect a wide range of camera systems to a central database. Police cameras, as well as privately owned cameras, can be connected to these databases, which are typically then shared across police departments nationwide. This is already making Americans less safe, as was demonstrated when a journalist in Georgia discovered that an unauthorized Flock employee was viewing the cameras within a Jewish community center. Faulty target identification is also coming home to roost in the US, as evidenced by the false charge against Chrisanna Elser in Colorado. Elser was charged with stealing a package on the basis of a false identification by ALPR cameras. While the case was eventually dropped, this precedent will inevitably lead to more individuals being wrongly targeted for crimes they did not commit.

These systems are all supported by data centers. Data centers built in our hometowns are already bringing the surveillance technology of war to our public spaces and private lives. We unwittingly fund all of this, and so it becomes our duty to resist it on every level possible: tax resistance, blocking data centers from being built in our communities, and resisting the reckless use of AI by government and private entities. The struggle for Palestinian rights, dignity, and livelihood is inextricably connected with the preservation of our freedoms in the US.

Pam Russell is a local peace activist. After serving the Reno community as the executive director of the Women and Children’s Center of the Sierra for ten years, she retired and is now a member of the feminist peace organization CODEPINK’s Reno Chapter.