Cisco Systems

Murtaza Hussain's report on internal Cisco presentations, purchase and revenue records and schedules provided by whistleblowers. A revenue deck records total Israeli revenue rising from USD 122 million in fiscal 2015 to USD 283 million in 2024, with USD 111 million of the 2024 figure attributed to 'conflict impact'; first-half Israeli revenue of USD 109 million in 2023, USD 150 million in 2024 and USD 115 million in 2025, of which USD 52 million, USD 98 million and USD 42 million came from Ministry of Defense work. One slide is headed 'Never let a good crisis go to waste'; a 'Big Bets' segment names an AI computing agreement worth USD 50 million and a routed optical network agreement worth USD 15 million for the ministry. An April 2021 report, 'Cisco Israel Ministry of Defense Win', states that the services in the agreement 'are as important … as the focus on aircrafts, tanks and any other essential military tools', calls Cisco 'the dominant ICT … partner to the MOD' and records that 'The Israel MOD account is a collection of 10 Classified Organizations that represents 50% of Cisco Israel's revenue. The account's overall budget is 30% of the government budget.' A sales spreadsheet run through the Israeli partner Bynet lists the Israeli Air Force, the Israeli Navy, the military computing unit MAMRAM, the Prime Minister's Office, the Israel Prison Service, the Ministry of Defense computing unit, Elbit Systems, Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries, the Israel Electric Company, Mekorot, the Jerusalem municipality and Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim. Cisco did not respond to a request for comment.

Cisco's own figures, for scale. Record revenue of USD 15.8 billion for the quarter ended April 2026, up 12% year on year; GAAP net income of USD 3.4 billion; GAAP operating margin of 25.0%. Total product orders up 35%, networking product orders up more than 50%. Full-year fiscal 2026 guidance of USD 62.8 to 63.0 billion of revenue. Remaining performance obligations of USD 43.5 billion, which is the contracted revenue not yet recognised - the measure an institutional cancellation actually moves.

Cisco announced completion of its acquisition of the Israeli cybersecurity company Astrix Security on 4 May 2026, at a final price of about USD 400 million. Astrix was founded in 2021 by Alon Jackson and Idan Gour, both graduates of the Israeli military's Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit, and secures 'non-human identities' such as API keys and service accounts. Its capabilities are to be integrated into Cisco Identity Intelligence and the Duo and Secure Access products, and fed into Splunk. Globes reported the announcement the same day.

The fullest current record, and the one that dates the contracts. Who Profits is an independent Israeli research centre that tracks corporate involvement in the occupation. It records that in 2017 Cisco won the Israeli Ministry of Defense tender to supply the military with servers for three years with an option for two more, for NIS 1 billion, integrated by the Israeli company Bynet Data Communications and 'funded by US foreign aid provided by the United States to Israel', replacing HP. It records that in July 2025 the ministry published a tender for the purchase of Cisco servers, and in March 2025 a tender for Cisco headsets with a push-to-talk button. It records the Unified Communications systems laid from March 2020; Cisco computing, communications, cybersecurity and load-balancing systems integrated into David's Citadel, the military's largest underground data centre in the Naqab, completed in 2020 at NIS 1.6 billion and integrating 'ICT data systems' of 300 surveillance, intelligence and combat units; the February 2019 'Klika' project, NIS 90 million from the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee for 45 hubs fitted with Cisco technology, of which seven opened on occupied land - Modi'in Illit, Beitar Illit, Kiryat Arba, Itamar and the Sha'ar Binyamin industrial zone in the occupied West Bank, and Katzrin and the Ha'Emir junction in the occupied Syrian Golan; Israel Police purchases of Cisco equipment and software worth NIS 4,060,533 across 2020 and 2021, obtained under a freedom of information request; and the 2017 smart city memorandum with the Jerusalem municipality, under which Cisco installed communications equipment and closed-circuit cameras for a pilot in the west of the city, the project being described as 'part of Israel's surveillance apparatus in Jerusalem, which is aimed mainly at the Palestinian residents of the city'. Israeli office recorded at 32 Hamelacha Street, Netanya. Page valid to 11 January 2026.

Meir Orbach's report that Cisco Israel is preparing to lay off dozens of employees, most at the company's development centre in Netanya, and that Cisco 'currently employs roughly 800 people in Israel'. Cisco's statement is that it 'is conducting an ongoing review of its operations in an effort to streamline and adapt to the changing needs of customers and the organization'. The article records that Cisco announced a cut of about 7% of its global workforce in August 2024.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel concludes that Israeli authorities and security forces 'have committed and are continuing to commit' acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and that Israel 'bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide'. The analysis covers Gaza over the period 7 October 2023 to 31 July 2025.

Archit Mehta's report on internal dissent. On 25 March 2025 Francine Katsoudas, Cisco's chief people, policy and purpose officer, told a company-wide call that 'Some topics are just simply too hard, too painful, too divisive', naming 'the ongoing conflict in the Middle East', and that 'We have made the decision that this topic cannot be discussed, cannot be debated in company or organization-wide meetings.' Hours later an employee outspoken on Palestine was dismissed; a week after that the company deleted Bridge to Humanity, the largest internal pro-Palestine Webex chat room, and its associated site. The report records an internal Cisco survey of 9 November 2023 counting staff with family in Gaza and the West Bank, and states that at least 32 Cisco employees had lost 288 family members in Gaza since October 2023. It records that WatermelonBot, built by employees to organise for divestment, gathered more than 1,700 signatures - about 2% of the workforce - in June and July 2024 before the company terminated it, and that in December 2024 members filed complaints with federal and California workplace agencies alleging discrimination. Cisco did not respond to a request for comment.

Cisco's own answer, and what it does not say. Invited to respond to the allegations about its Israeli military, police and settlement business, the company said it has 'a longstanding commitment to respecting human rights throughout our global operations' and that it conducts 'human rights due diligence, including on transactions that present heightened potential human rights risks'. It added that 'Cisco builds to global standards and our sales activities are in strict compliance with U.S. export rules and regulations, and Cisco's policies.' The response does not address the Ministry of Defense contracts, the technology hubs on occupied land or the Israel Police purchases.

The wire-service investigation by Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick and Garance Burke into United States technology in Israeli military targeting. On Cisco it states, in full: 'The military has used Cisco and Dell server farms or data centers.' It records that Google and Amazon provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services under the USD 1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract signed in 2021, that Red Hat has provided cloud computing technologies to the Israeli military, and that Palantir has a 'strategic partnership' with Israel. It also records that use of Microsoft and OpenAI models by the Israeli military rose sharply after October 2023. 'Palantir, Cisco and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.'

The BNC's own dossier, and the source for the sequence of the server contract. It records that Cisco was selected by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in 2017 to replace Hewlett Packard Enterprise as sole server provider, that 'In 2023, Dell was selected to replace Cisco as the main provider of servers for the Israeli military', and that 'the military continues to buy Cisco servers', citing the ministry procurement database for almost USD 2 million across eight contracts between November 2023 and January 2024 - adding that this 'is likely an underestimate, as this database only discloses unclassified contracts that were awarded without a tender process'. It records the November 2023 sale of Webex to the Israeli military through Bynet, the 2013 USD 150 million communications contract over five years with a two-year option, the October 2023 'Israel Rises' platform for the Home Front Command, and at least twenty acquisitions of Israeli companies between 2013 and 2024.

The Palestinian-led ask, and the one that tells an institution exactly what to look for. The BNC, the coalition of Palestinian organisations that leads the BDS movement, called a day of action on 11 February 2025 timed to Cisco's earnings call the following day. It states that 'Cisco is a priority tech target that is best impacted through ending institutional contracts with it', and names the products: 'If your institution (city council, university, hospital, trade union, etc.) uses Webex, Meraki, Duo Mobile, Splunk, ThousandEyes, Jasper and Cisco hardware (including Cisco brand phones and security cameras), then it has contracts with Cisco that you can mobilize pressure to end.' The BNC's separate Cisco campaign page asks institutions to exclude Cisco from proposals, end current contracts, commit not to renew, and divest from the whole group.

The American Friends Service Committee's research register, which flags Cisco under Gaza Genocide, Military Contractors/Suppliers/Logistics and Settlement Industry. It describes Cisco as 'a US-based digital communications company that provides technologies to the Israeli military, police, and prisons, and to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory'. It records the 2017 selection by the Israeli Ministry of Defense as 'sole provider of servers for the Israeli military', minimum value USD 250 million, paid for by the United States government through the Foreign Military Sales programme; the David's Citadel data centre; the Unified Communications System since 2020; Webex sold to the Israeli military from 2023; support for the 'Israel Rises' platform and grants to employees on reserve duty after October 2023; digital hubs in five West Bank settlements and two in the occupied Syrian Golan as of September 2023; the 2017 Jerusalem smart city equipment and cameras; and Israel Police purchases of over USD 1 million in 2020 and 2021. It records that between November 2023 and January 2024 the ministry purchased Cisco servers worth almost USD 2 million across eight contracts. Page valid as of 5 February 2025.

What the surveillance environment does to the people inside it, documented by Palestinians. 7amleh - the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media is a Palestinian digital rights organisation. Its report draws on fifteen interviews and a survey of 502 East Jerusalem residents carried out in September and October 2024. It documents a systematic increase in the use of surveillance cameras with facial recognition, drones and predictive 'criminal' behaviour algorithms. Seventy per cent of respondents said they censor themselves on social media for fear of retribution, 65.3% said using social media poses a personal risk, 37.4% lacked confidence in protecting their data online and a quarter reported significant changes to their freedom of movement.

A university campaign dossier, and a worked example of tracing one institution's exposure. It records that Cisco Israel opened its first branch in 1997, employs around 800 people across six development sites, and has acquired at least twenty Israeli companies for a total investment of USD 7.2 billion; that Cisco announced a new branch at Ofakim in February 2024; that the 2017 Ministry of Defense contract was extended for two more years before Dell won the tender in 2023; that the 2018 network of 100 digital hubs included seven on occupied land and eleven in the Naqab, two of them in the Palestinian Bedouin towns of Hura and Rahat; and that Cisco and Microsoft together put USD 500 million into the Israeli venture group Team8 in March 2024. It also records UCL's own holding of GBP 2,043,488 in Cisco stock as of July 2023.

The Court held that Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful, that Israel is under an obligation to bring it to an end, and that settlements and their associated economic activity are contrary to international law. This is the finding that attaches to the seven technology hubs Cisco fitted out on occupied land.

The internal letter from Cisco employees and shareholders, published by the BDS movement. It runs to about thirty pages, sets out the company's Israeli military, police and settlement business against Cisco's own 'Conscious Culture' commitments, human rights policy and code of business conduct, and demands transparency about the company's dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the associated internal call for divestment in June and July 2024.

The earlier Who Profits flash report, which sets out how the hubs began and what the Jerusalem pilot actually contained. Cisco announced a three-year partnership with the Israeli government in 2016 to advance the 'Digital Israel National Initiative', and in 2018 a joint effort to open 100 technological hubs fitted with Cisco technology; the February 2019 allocation of NIS 90 million for 45 of them followed. Of the ten hubs open at the time of writing, one stood at the Ha'Emir junction in the occupied Syrian Golan and one in the Mateh Binyamin regional council in the occupied West Bank, with further hubs planned for Modi'in Illit, Beitar Illit and the Shomron regional council, and twenty-six planned for Jerusalem including occupied East Jerusalem. On Jerusalem it records that in August 2017 Cisco offered the municipality a free-of-charge 36-month pilot at two sites in the centre of West Jerusalem, installing technology, communication equipment and closed-circuit cameras connected to a command and control centre with video analysis software, a voice detection capacity, the ability to alert on lingering groups and capacity to analyse footage from up to 10,000 cameras - in a city where, it states, the visual surveillance apparatus 'predominantly targets the Palestinian population under its control'. It records that Cisco has spent over USD 2 billion acquiring Israeli start-ups since the late 1990s and invests in over 25 more, among them the cyber-security incubator Team8, which raised USD 18 million from several investors including Cisco. It also records that in 2008 Cisco signed a deal with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to invest USD 10 million in the Palestinian hi-tech sector, managed through Cisco-Israel, and that the outsourcing model it set paid Palestinian engineers about USD 2,500 against about USD 4,000 for an Israeli hi-tech worker, with Intel, Microsoft and Mellanox following. Who Profits contacted Cisco before publication: 'None was received.'

Contemporaneous reporting of the 2017 award, describing a multi-million shekel contract to upgrade the defence networks, delivered through the Israeli systems integrator Bynet. This is the award that displaced Hewlett Packard Enterprise as the Israeli military's server supplier and that Dell took over in 2023.

Reporting of the earlier communications equipment contract with the Israeli military, run over five years with an option to extend by two. It establishes that the Ministry of Defense relationship predates the 2017 server tender by at least four years.