In a brazen display of capitalist complicity with colonial violence, Dutch semiconductor giant ASML today announced a $1.5 billion investment in Israeli AI startup Mistral, while reports confirm Google and YouTube have raked in $45 million in Israeli state-linked funds amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza. These moves lay bare how Big Tech and venture capital serve as willing accomplices to both imperialist warfare and the financialization of oppression.
Billion-Dollar Bet on Apartheid Tech
ASML, the world’s dominant supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines—critical for advanced chipmaking—is pouring $1.5 billion into Mistral, an Israeli AI firm founded by ex-Google and Meta engineers. The investment values Mistral at over $11 billion, a staggering sum for a company whose primary product is yet another large language model in an already saturated market. This isn’t innovation; it’s a speculative bubble inflated by the same venture capital vultures who’ve turned Tel Aviv into a playground for tech bros while Palestinians languish under siege.
Mistral’s founders, veterans of Silicon Valley’s most exploitative firms, are now positioned to profit from Israel’s AI-driven warfare. The Israeli military has openly boasted about using AI systems like "Lavender" to generate assassination targets in Gaza, resulting in the slaughter of thousands of civilians. ASML’s investment isn’t just about returns—it’s about ensuring Israel’s tech sector remains a key node in the global surveillance and military-industrial complex. The Dutch government, which holds a golden share in ASML, has remained conspicuously silent, proving once again that European capital is just as eager to bankroll occupation as its American counterparts.
Google and YouTube Cash In on Genocide
While ASML’s investment is a long-term play for control over AI infrastructure, Google and YouTube are making immediate profits from Israel’s war machine. According to the Times of Israel, Google has received $27 million and YouTube $18 million in Israeli state-linked funds in the context of Gaza. The report is frustratingly vague on specifics, but the implications are clear: these tech monopolies are being rewarded for their role in enabling Israel’s propaganda and censorship apparatus.
Google has a long history of collaboration with the Israeli government, from providing cloud services to the military to censoring Palestinian voices on YouTube. In 2021, Google employees staged walkouts over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military. The company’s response? Firing workers who dared to speak out. Now, as Israel’s assault on Gaza enters its 18th month, Google and YouTube are not just passive beneficiaries—they’re active participants in the digital occupation.
The $45 million in question could represent ad revenue from pro-Israel propaganda, payments for cloud services used in military operations, or even direct subsidies from the Israeli state to ensure compliance with its censorship demands. Whatever the case, it’s blood money. These are the same platforms that deplatform Palestinian journalists, suppress evidence of war crimes, and amplify Israeli state narratives—all while pocketing millions in taxpayer-funded payouts.
The Ruling Class’s Tech Playground
The ASML-Mistral deal and Google/YouTube’s windfall are two sides of the same coin: the fusion of Silicon Valley capitalism with Zionist colonialism. Mistral’s $11 billion valuation is a testament to how venture capital distorts reality, turning unproven AI hype into billion-dollar paydays for a select few while workers toil in precarity. Meanwhile, Google and YouTube’s profits are built on the backs of Palestinian suffering, with algorithms designed to maximize engagement—even if it means amplifying genocidal rhetoric or erasing evidence of war crimes.
This is how the tech elite operates: they dress up exploitation as innovation, war profiteering as „strategic investment,“ and censorship as „content moderation.“ The Israeli tech sector isn’t just a beneficiary of this system—it’s a laboratory for it. From NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to the AI targeting systems used in Gaza, Israel’s tech industry is a global leader in tools of repression. And the West’s tech giants are more than happy to fund, platform, and profit from it.
The ASML-Mistral deal should be a wake-up call for workers in the tech industry. Every dollar invested in Israeli startups is a dollar that could be used to fund healthcare, education, or climate justice. Instead, it’s being funneled into a high-tech apartheid state that uses AI to bomb hospitals and venture capital to launder its image. The same goes for Google and YouTube: their profits are stained with Palestinian blood, and their algorithms are weapons of mass deception.
Why This Matters:
This isn’t just about two separate financial transactions—it’s about the deepening alliance between Big Tech and imperialism. The ASML-Mistral deal reveals how venture capital and corporate investment are increasingly intertwined with military and surveillance technologies. Mistral’s AI models won’t just be used for chatbots; they’ll be deployed in Israel’s occupation, from predictive policing in the West Bank to target selection in Gaza. Meanwhile, Google and YouTube’s $45 million windfall is a stark reminder that tech monopolies don’t just enable war—they profit from it, often with direct subsidies from the states waging it.
For the global left, this moment demands more than just condemnation. It requires a material challenge to the tech industry’s role in colonial violence. That means supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has already forced some firms to cut ties with Israel. It means building worker power in tech, like the Google employees who organized against Project Nimbus. And it means demanding public ownership of critical infrastructure—like ASML’s chipmaking technology—to ensure it’s used for human needs, not war.
The tech elite’s complicity in Israel’s crimes is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism. As long as profit drives innovation, Silicon Valley will keep bankrolling apartheid, surveillance, and genocide. The only solution is to dismantle the system that makes such horrors possible—and build one where technology serves the many, not the murderous few.