AN ISRAELI GOVERNMENT
CONTRACTOR FOUNDED BY A FORMER ISRAELI SPY HAS PARTNERED WITH ONE U.S. STATE
AND IS SET TO ANNOUNCE A SERIES OF NEW PARTNERSHIPS WITH OTHER STATES AND U.S.
HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS TO MONITOR CIVILIAN HEALTH AND USE AN IDF-DESIGNED AI
SYSTEM TO PROFILE AMERICANS LIKELY TO CONTRACT CORONAVIRUS AND TO INFORM U.S.
GOVERNMENT LOCKDOWN POLICY.
A company tied to Israel’s
military signal intelligence unit, Unit 8200, has recently partnered with the
state of Rhode Island to use an artificial intelligence-based system developed in tandem with the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) to profile Americans potentially infected and/or “at risk”
of being infected with coronavirus, then informing government authorities of
their “risk profile.” Once flagged, state health officials can target those
individuals as well as their communities for mandatory testing, treatment
and/or more restrictive lockdown measures.
The firm, Israel-based
Diagnostic Robotics, is poised to announce a series of new such partnerships
with several other U.S. states as well as major U.S. hospital systems and
healthcare providers in the coming weeks, according to a company spokesperson.
The first of these announcements came on June 30 regarding
the firm’s new partnership with Mayo Clinic, which will soon implement the
Diagnostic Robotics’ “artificial intelligence platform that predicts patients’
hospitalization risk.” They have also been in discussions with Vice President
Mike Pence about the platform’s implementation nationwide since April.
Their creeping expansion into
the U.S.’ state coronavirus response and that of other countries has been directly
facilitated by the organization Start-Up Nation Central, funded by controversial
hedge fund manager Paul Singer and directly partnered with an
Israeli government-backed intelligence initiative aimed at making the United
States dependent on technology developed by the Israeli military or
intelligence community as a means of preventing the adoption of policies that
support the non-violent Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement at the
state and local levels. This initiative also serves the dual purpose of
ensuring Israel’s political influence and positioning as the global “cyber
power,” an oft-repeated policy goal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
Since March, Diagnostic
Robotics’ AI-based “risk profiling” software for coronavirus has been utilized
by the Israeli state in the form of the National Israeli COVID-19 Monitoring
System, a key component of its increasingly Orwellian national health
surveillance system. That system, which also initially partnered with Clalit —
Israel’s largest health services provider, now involves the “daily nation-wide
monitoring of coronavirus-related symptoms of the population.” Of course, these
“coronavirus-related symptoms” include common symptoms such as headaches,
coughing, abdominal pain and confusion, which can indicate any number of minor illnesses,
allergic reactions or other conditions entirely unrelated to coronavirus.
The Diagnostic Robotics
platform specifically acquires information from individuals via an online
questionnaire, but also has access to national and private health databases by
virtue of its partnerships with Clalit as well as all four of Israel’s health
management organizations (HMOs), all of the country’s domestic healthcare
providers and Israel’s Health Ministry. That data is then pooled and analyzed
to assess a given individual’s “probability of infection” that is then cross
checked with the information of “millions of others,” according to the
company’s co-founder and Unit 8200 alumnus Kira Radinsky.
After that mass of data is
pooled and analyzed by the platform’s AI-powered algorithm, the company’s
platform, as used in Israel and now elsewhere, creates a
“personalized, AI-based risk profile for Covid-19” for individuals and delivers
that individual’s information and any “red flags” to health authorities,
providing the Health Ministry with a map of corona “hot spots” that the
government then uses to identify which communities to target with testing and
more restrictive lockdown measures. Forbes noted that
Israel’s use of Diagnostic Robotics’ platform has allowed it to “quickly close
contaminated areas…as fast as a single day from the identification of
symptomatic patients.” An internal study conducted
by the company itself claims that the platform has a predictive accuracy of
73%, but their study has not been audited by independent scientists.
Israel’s health ministry, led
by Yuli Edelstein, recently announced that Diagnostic Robotics “predictive”
platform would be used more intensively to inform government decision-making as
he, Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers have recently asserted that
Israel is beginning to experience a “second wave” of coronavirus and must implement more restrictive
measures and augment the use of existing and new “digital solutions.”
Former Israeli health officials and other critics have asserted,
however, that there is no “second wave” given that the test used by the
government does not distinguish between active and inactive coronavirus cases.
Others still have argued that
the proposed measures are grossly unnecessary, given that there are less than
40 serious cases of coronavirus in the entire country and only 22 coronavirus
patients are on ventilators.
Notably, the timing of this
renewed push for more restrictive lockdowns and an expansion of its AI-driven
Orwellian “health” surveillance coincides directly with the imminent initiation of
Israel’s government plans to annex large swaths of Palestine’s West Bank, an
act that is expected to generate unrest, not only in occupied Palestine, but
also parts of Israel and internationally due to its flagrant illegality and
far-reaching implications.
PREDICTIVE DATA HOTSPOTS
After heavy promotion of
Israel’s use of its platforms by media outlets and Israeli tech “advocacy” organizations,
Diagnostic Robotics’ top executives announced on April 10 that their predictive
health surveillance technology would soon be rolled out to “assist authorities”
in governments around the world, specifically the U.S., Western Europe and
Asia.
“The strong partnership
[between Diagnostic Robotics and the Israeli government] will ensure that our
solution is accessible to as many patients as possible, and available to
different government authorities in the United States, Europe and Asia,” the
company’s CEO Yonatan Amir had told the Jerusalem Post.
Amir also told the Jerusalem
Post that,
at the time, the company was already in discussions with the White House
Coronavirus Task Force “with the assistance of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence”
about its software being used on a nationwide scale.
Less than two weeks after the
publication of that report, the state of Rhode Island announced that the
state’s Health Department would partner with Diagnostic Robotics to create a
site called the Rhode Island Covid-19 Self-Checker that
would collect medical information on Rhode Island residents and utilize its
“predictive” capabilities.
“We are incredibly excited
about the partnership with Diagnostic Robotics,” Rhode Island Governor Gina
Raimondo had said at the time of the site’s
announcement on April 22. “Diagnostic Robotics is a leader
in using innovative technology to ensure people get the right care at the right
time – including during the COVID-19 pandemic. By making it easier for people
to make decisions about how to protect themselves and when to seek care and
testing, we’re helping to slow the spread of COVID-19, support our healthcare
system, and save lives.”
However, reports on the
initiative and Raimondo’s statement, which was sparsely covered by local and
national American news media, noted that the
site “also uses predictive technology to recognize possible outbreaks before
they occur.” That functionality will combine the data obtained from the site
with “medical databases” to
which the state’s Health Department has access. The analysis of these data,
such as “likely” future coronavirus patients and potential future hotspots, is
then given to the state’s Health Department and meant to inform their
decision-making regarding in which areas of the state to tighten lockdowns, to
ramp up testing and/or mandate treatments or vaccinations, once a vaccine
becomes available.
The information collected by
the site itself includes an individual’s “risk factors” and
if they have any of several common symptoms as well as demographic and medical
background information. A user’s IP address and device information is also
collected. While the official purpose of the site is to recommend if a
participating individual should seek medical care or request a coronavirus
test, the Diagnostic Robotics-created site notes in its Terms of Use that the site is not intended
for use as a “diagnostic tool” and “does not provide diagnosis and/or
professional medical advice.” It nevertheless states that Diagnostic Robotics
“has the right (including the moral right) to use, copy, store, reproduce and
process your information and to create derivative works therefrom and from the
Intellectual Property rights created by the use of your information without any
further consent, notice or compensation to you or to any other person.”
The terms also state that the
company “shall not be liable for any exposure or publication of the answers to
said questionnaires or the data you entered into the system to any other party
due to any malfunction or defect in the system or after information is
transmitted in accordance with the company’s privacy policy.”
Crucially, Rhode Island’s
partnership with Diagnostic Robotics’ is merely the first sign of the company’s
intentions to rapidly expand into the U.S. A few weeks ago, company
spokesperson Michal Kabatznik told the Jerusalem Post that
the company is “in advanced conversations with other states, leading healthcare
providers and some of the top hospital systems in the U.S.,” adding that “there
will be some big announcements in the coming days.” The first of these “big
announcements” came on Tuesday when the firm’s partnership with Mayo
Clinic was made public.
In addition, the company began
hiring a variety of executive positions for a New York-based office soon
after Kabatznik teased the coming announcements of a series of new U.S.
partnerships. These job listings note that Diagnostic Robotics’ is planning a
major and “rapid” U.S. expansion and identifies the U.S. as its current
“strategic market.”
BAIT AND SWITCH
Diagnostic Robotics’ privacy policy, as used in the Rhode Island
partnership, allows the company to utilize the information it acquires through
this partnership in a “de-identified manner” as part of two different
coronavirus initiatives that involve major U.S. tech firms, healthcare technology
companies and/or elements of the U.S. national security state.
The first of these
initiatives, COVID 360, was created by Diagnostic Robotics in
tandem with two other companies: Salesforce, a cloud-based software corporation
closely tied to Oracle and whose
CEO/founder was mentored by Colin
Powell, and Deloitte Global, one of the world’s largest consulting firms
with a history of hiring ex-CIA officers.
COVID 360 is described by Diagnostic
Robotics’ CEO as “a comprehensive solution for individuals at risk of COVID-19
and those experiencing symptoms of the virus.” Salesforce Senior VP, Bob
Vanstraelen, further elaboratedthat
the platform is “a free full Coronavirus treatment solution for patients and
citizens at risk” and is “built by Deloitte Israel, based on Salesforce
Health-Cloud, and Diagnostics Robotics Al triage and clinical predictions
platform.”
However, an official video from
the COVID 360 initiative notes that “government agencies or caretakers” that
utilize the system will send a person potentially at risk of exposure to
coronavirus, oddly referred to in the video as a “coronavirus patient at risk
of exposure,” a message telling them that they were found to have been “in
proximity to a potential positive coronavirus case.” The message, as shown in
the video, then demands that the recipient follow a link within the message and
register for the COVID 360 system. Upon registration, an employee of the
government agency determines which person to refer for mandatory coronavirus
testing and/or treatment regimes based on government-drafted protocols related
to coronavirus. The COVID 360 system is currently being used in India’s Odisha
state, home to nearly 50 million people, according to Diagnostic
Robotics spokesperson Michal Kabatznik.
The second initiative of which
Diagnostic Robotics is part is much larger than the three member group behind
COVID 360. Called the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition, its members include
tech giants and government/intelligence contractors Microsoft, Amazon,
Palantir, Leidos, and Google as well as a number of U.S. national laboratories,
the U.S. civilian corps and the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. It also
includes a number of U.S. hospital systems, U.S. universities (with MIT chief
among them) and healthcare IT providers, as well as pharmaceutical company
Pfizer and Mayo Clinic. As previously mentioned, Mayo Clinic’s partnership with
Diagnostic Robotics was announced just
this past Tuesday.
The coalition claims to be a
“private-sector led response that brings together healthcare organizations,
technology firms, nonprofits, academia and startups” in order “help protect
U.S. populations” and “provide data-driven, real-time insights to improve clinical
outcomes” and government decision-making related to coronavirus. Their website notes
that “coalition members openly share plans, coordinate their combined work
wherever possible, identify best practices, communicate broadly and openly, and
distribute capabilities in an open-source manner.” Notably, the coalition
specifically directs their combined efforts to influence policy for “healthy
populations,” “people at risk of Covid-19 exposure,” and “healthcare delivery
systems.”
According to press releases present
on the coalition’s website, the coalition “represents a vast source of data,
expertise, capabilities and insights and will complement federal, state and
local government actions.” Since their formation earlier this year, the coalition
has released several resources, including the Covid-19 Decision Support
Dashboard, a tool for government officials and business leaders
to navigate how to “reopen” or lock down communities and businesses. That tool
was designed by and populated with data provided by coalition members,
Diagnostic Robotics among them.
DIAGNOSTIC ROBOTICS’ ROOTS IN
ISRAELI SPY TECH “SPECIAL OPS”
Diagnostic Robotics was founded
in 2017 by Kira Radinksy, Dr. Moshe Shaham and Yonatan Amir, all of whom
officially met through their affiliation (visiting professor/alumnus, professor
and alumnus, respectively) at Israel’s Technion University. The company was
originally intended to help hospital emergency rooms gauge and predict patient
load through the use of AI, ostensibly allowing an emergency room to make
preparations in advance that would allow them to manage patient load and
prioritize patients, among other features.
It was reportedly Amir’s
idea to pivot the platform for use in combating the coronavirus crisis, with
the company modifying the platform to serve as a “one-stop shop for managing
the disease, an end-to-end centralized solution for Covid-19 treatment,” according to company
spokesperson Michal Kabatznik. He also added that the modifications were
initially made using the U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidance and data
received from Italy and South Korea.
The company then reached out to
Israel’s Health Ministry and made further modifications in order to supply
Israel’s government with a “relevant platform.” Many of those modifications
came courtesy of the IDF, which – according to company co-founder
Radinsky – “made our algorithms part of a large operational
system that had to function smoothly in less than 2 weeks.” The resulting
“operational system” was the company’s National Israeli COVID-19 Monitoring
System, now in use in all of Israel and much of occupied Palestine. That same
system, as previously mentioned, is also the model for the Rhode Island system
and those set to be implemented in other states that are slated to imminently
announce their own partnerships with Diagnostic Robotics.
Radinsky’s involvement in
founding Diagnostic Robotics, and her current role as the company’s chairwoman
and chief technology officer (CTO), is particularly noteworthy. Her
career began at Israel’s military signal
intelligence unit, Unit 8200 – often described as Israel’s
equivalent of the U.S.’ National Security Agency (NSA) that is well known for
its hacking operations and surveillance of Palestine as well as foreign
countries around the world, including the United States. During her time in
Unit 8200, she was recruited for the unit’s even more secretive and
controversial division, Unit 81, where she worked in “special operations.”
Unit 81, specifically has been described by
supporters as an “intelligence toy factory,” whose “toys” have included land mines disguised
as rocks and other weapons of war as well as tools of mass surveillance (i.e.
“signals intelligence”). In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, Unit 81
was tasked by Israel’s Defense Ministry with creating “software
for hospitals that can store and analyze patient data, infection tracking, test
results, providing hospitals with data to help them make sense of what they’re
seeing and how best to combat the everyday challenge,” software that sounds
remarkably similar to the platform that Radinsky’s Diagnostic Robotics would
subsequently produce with help from an unspecified unit of the Israeli
military.
Radinsky was quickly recruited
by Microsoft upon leaving Unit 8200 and Unit 81 to “lead strategic Microsoft incubation projects,”
including algorithms to predict disease
outbreaks as well as civil unrest and riots. She then created
her own company, SalesPredict, which was staffed by other
Unit 8200 alumni and later acquired by eBay, owned by controversial billionaire Pierre
Omidyar. Radinsky subsequently became eBay’s Director of Data
Science and Chief Scientist of its branch in Israel.
One month after obtaining this
lucrative position at eBay, Radinsky became an advisory board member to
the bank HSBC, one of the most notorious money laundering banks in
the world with close ties to
drug cartels, particularly in Mexico and Colombia.
Less than a year after joining HSBC, Radinsky became a board member of the
Israeli government’s Securities Authority, which works closely with the country’s
Finance Ministry and the Knesset. It has been criticized in recent years of “tacitly consenting” to
widespread forex and binary options scams in Israel’s financial industry. After
becoming Diagnostic Robotics’ CTO, she left the Israel Securities Authority but
continues to maintain her position on HSBC’s advisory board.
Radinsky’s close ties to the
world of Israeli and global finance were likely a factor in Diagnostic
Robotics’ ability to secure $24 million in funding last
November, the same month when the U.S. government warned Israel of
an imminent global pandemic caused by coronavirus. Since then, the lead
investors in the company have been Accelmed Growth Partners and Mivtach Shamir
Holdings.
Accelmed Growth Partners is a
venture capital firm founded and led by Dr. Uri Geiger, a former
Israeli Air Force officer whose private-sector career began at the
notorious law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, best known as the
former law firm of the CIA’s first director Allen Dulles that has long-standing
ties to the intelligence agency.
Mivtach Shamir Holdings is a
venture capital firm whose CEO and main shareholder is
Meir Shamir, long-time chairman of
Birthright Israel. Birthright Israel is one of the most notable
“ethno-philanthropic” endeavors of the Mega Group, the organized crime-linked
organization co-founded by Leslie Wexner and Charles Bronfman in 1991
with close ties to the Jeffrey Epstein
scandal and Israeli espionage scandals in general.
Birthright was created by Mega Group members Charles Bronfman and Michael
Steinhardt three years after the group was founded and its main donors include
the Bronfmans, Steinhardt, Israel’s government and Sheldon Adelson.
A FOREIGN MINISTRY FOR ISRAEL’S
TECH INDUSTRY
One of the earliest promoters
of Diagnostic Robotics and its coronavirus-related initiatives is an organization
called Start-Up Nation Central (SUNC).
SUNC was created in 2012 with funding from billionaire hedge fund manager Paul
Singer, a fervent Zionist who also funds the neoconservative think tank
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Islamophobic and hawkish think tank Foundation
for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and
also funded the now-defunct Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a successor to the
Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Singer funded the organization
into existence with the help of his long-time associate, former Mitt Romney
advisor and neoconservative activist Dan Senor, whose sister Wendy Singer is
currently SUNC’s executive director. She was previously the long-time head of
AIPAC’s Israel office. SUNC’s current CEO is Eugene Kandel, Netanyahu’s chief
economic advisor from 2009 to 2015.
The motivation behind the
creation of SUNC was aimed at integrating Israeli start-ups, specifically tech
start-ups created by former Unit 8200 alumni, into foreign and specifically American
companies as a means of targeting the non-violent Boycott, Divest and Sanctions
(BDS) movement that promotes human rights for Palestinians and the end of
Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. It has been called “a foreign ministry for Israel’s tech
industry.”
SUNC’s creation was also directly related to
Benjamin Netanyahu’s “deliberate policy” to have former members of Israel’s
“military and intelligence units … merge into companies with local partners and
foreign partners” in order to make it all but impossible for major corporations
and foreign governments to boycott Israel and to also to ensure that Israel
becomes the world’s dominant “cyber power.” Singer is a long-time supporter and
donor to Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party.
The same year as SUNC’s
creation and this “deliberate” policy of Netanyahu, Israeli intelligence –
which directly answer to the Prime Minister’s office – began instituting a
policy where military intelligence and intelligence operations that had
previously done “in house” (i.e. as part of Unit 8200, Mossad, etc.) were spun
off into private companies, specifically start-ups.
For instance, a report on this
policy, published by Israeli outlet Calcalist
Tech, interviewed dozens of Israeli military, intelligence
and government officials and noted that “since 2012, cyber-related and
intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli
military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that
in some cases were built for this exact purpose.” The article also states that
beginning in 2012, Israel’s intelligence and military intelligence agencies
began to outsource “activities that were previously managed in-house, with a
focus on software and cyber technologies.”
Since this policy was
instituted, the line between Israel’s tech start-up industry and its
intelligence apparatus has become increasingly blurred, with former Mossad and
Shin Bet directors serving as advisors and board members to numerous Israeli
tech start-ups. In addition, many executives and founders of these start-ups
are alumni of Unit 8200 or other intelligence agencies, with some – such
as Cybereason’s CEO Lior Div –
openly admitting that their work at these “private” companies are a direct
continuation of their prior service to Israel’s national security state.
Unsurprisingly, Diagnostic
Robotics – a company partnered with Israel’s military and Health Ministry and
created by a Unit 8200 alumnus – fits the profile of the type of Israeli firm
whose expansion abroad is facilitated by SUNC and is represented onSUNC’s
website. Indeed, Wendy Singer of SUNC recently authored an article forForbes praising the company’s
predictive population health surveillance tool and was interviewed alongside
Radinksy in a Times of Israel report highlighting
Israeli start-ups and technologies set to be used to combat the country’s
alleged “second wave” of infections.
In addition, Diagnostic
Robotics is one of the company’s promoted by the
CoronaTech initiative, a joint effort between SUNC and
HealthIL – part of a joint venture involving the Ministry of Economy and the
Ministry of Social Equality. In addition, the CoronaTech website is managed by
Wix – a website building company created by a former Unit 8200 alumnus.
CoronaTech’s stated purpose is to act “as a central
gateway to discover leading Israeli innovation and best practices” “for
healthcare providers, governments and other organizations.”
UNOFFICIAL USES, GUARANTEED OUTCOMES
Diagnostic Robotics’
co-founder’s ties to Israeli intelligence, the company’s backing by a Mega
Group-linked venture capital firm and its close partnerships with the Israeli
government, military and SUNC, are all causes for concern regarding their
coronavirus-specific system’s use to monitor populations both in Israel and now
in the United States. However, their partnerships with Rhode Island and Mayo
Clinic, as well as those slated to be announced in the coming days and weeks,
are particularly troubling given Israel’s aggressive history of espionage against
the United States that has been on-going for decades, much of which has been
conducted through “backdoors” in software products, hacking and other means of
electronic infiltration.
Many of these intelligence
operations – which, more often that not, combine Unit 8200, SUNC and the
Israeli government – have also appeared to have the added purpose, not just of
preventing victories for the BDS movement or ensuring Israel’s position as a
global “cyber power,” but also advancing the creation of what I have come to
call the “binational security state.”
This agenda, in the age of coronavirus, has grown by leaps and bounds. Examples
include how Israeli spy-linked tech firms are set to construct New
York state’s “smart cities,” dominate the
U.S.’ 911 emergency call system and offer “remote government” options to
federal and state agencies, all in the months since the coronavirus crisis
first began in earnest.
Many of these Israeli
spy-linked tech firms also include members of the U.S.’ national security state
and intelligence communities as board members or prominent advisors, including
former heads of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff and
Kirstjen Nielsen; former chief information security officer for the CIA, Robert
Bigman; and former member of the U.S. Military’s Joint Special Operations
Command, Geoff Hancock, among many others. Together, the national security
states of both the U.S. and Israel have been steadily constructing an Orwellian nightmare in
both countries, a nightmare that has become closer to reality than ever before
under the guise of “healthcare” and combating the coronavirus pandemic.
Diagnostic Robotics’ efforts to
predict and monitor entire populations with AI is a potent tool that can be
used for many purposes that have little to do with public health. Much like
“contact tracing” software that was first justified by the pandemic has
subsequently been used to target and track protesters,
Diagnostic Robotics’ predictive analytics and “hotspot” maps can be used for
the same ends. Given the track record of the national security states of both
the U.S. and Israel, such “unofficial” uses of these “digital solutions” to the
pandemic are not just speculative, they are guaranteed.
