…the internal military systems quickly became overloaded due to the enormous number of soldiers and military personnel who were added to the platform as users, causing technical problems that threatened to slow down Israel’s military functions.

The first attempt to solve the problem, Dembinsky explained, involved activating all the available spare servers in the army’s warehouses and setting up another data center — but it wasn’t enough. They decided they needed to “go outside, to the civilian world.” According to her, cloud services offered by major tech firms allowed the army to purchase unlimited storage and processing servers at the click of a button, without the obligation to physically store the servers in the army’s computer centers.

But the “most important” advantage that the cloud companies provided, Dembinsky said, was their advanced capabilities in artificial intelligence. “The crazy wealth of services, big data and AI — we’ve already reached a point where our systems really need it,” she said with a smile. Working with these companies, she added, has granted the military “very significant operational effectiveness” in the Gaza Strip.