MIT Science for genocide
Dedicated to the children of Palestine
Read our Research primer and Electronic intifada article
Executive summary
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) contributes to the Gaza Genocide and Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine in at least two distinct ways. First, MIT laboratories on campus conduct weapons and surveillance research directly sponsored by the Israeli military. Since at least 2015, MIT laboratories have received millions of dollars from the Israeli Ministry of Defense for projects to develop algorithms that help drone swarms to better pursue escaping targets; to improve underwater surveillance technology; and support military aircraft evade missiles. Two of these sponsorships were renewed since October 7th, 2023, while one came up for renewal in December 2024. Second, MIT maintains institutional collaborations through the ILP, LGO, CSAIL, and MIT Energy Initiative programs with companies that sell vast amounts of weapons to Israel. These include Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military contractor, as well as Maersk, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar. These collaborations grant genocide profiteers privileged access to MIT talent and expertise.
MIT’s ties to the genocide of Palestinians are immoral, illegal, and unpopular among the MIT community. The sponsorships break MIT’s own rules on foreign engagements, scientific ethics, nondiscrimination, health, safety, and the environment as well as federal and international law. By abetting genocide, MIT sends a message to Palestinians at MIT that it does not value their human life. MIT has the power to end its ties unilaterally, just as other schools have in Europe and North America. Since 2020 for instance, MIT has taken action against research ties and corporate partnership over political and human rights concerns in Xinjiang, Ukraine, and the Middle East. With the highest turnout in living memory, the student body ratified two campus-wide referendums in 2024 to end MIT’s ties to Israeli crimes against humanity: a 63.7 percent yes-vote in the MIT Undergraduate Association and a 70.5 percent vote in the Graduate Student Union – with ample support from faculty and staff. This was followed in December 2024 by a resolution in the Graduate Student Council to end all research sponsorships by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Key Findings - Research complicity
Since 2015, at least 9 PIs have taken money from the Israeli Ministry of Defense (I.M.o.D.). At least three of the projects are ongoing, two of them having been renewed during the recent phase of genocide. One additional PI, Dirk Englund, has also submitted a proposal to IMoD & IDF working on quantum computing, which is still awaiting approval. According to MIT’s research contract rules, the Israeli military has the right to “shape direction and objectives” as Direct Sponsors of these projects. This transaction is facilitated by the US DoD.
MIT holds a firm place in the US military-industrial complex, with traditional partners including RTX (Raytheon), Draper Laboratory, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing. About 60% of MIT revenue comes from the federal government, and 17.4% from the Department of Defense. MIT prioritizes institutional collaborations with firms that sell and transport weapons to Israel for profit.
Key Findings - industry complicity
Elbit Systems, Ltd. is Israel’s largest military contractor. Elbit supplies 85% of Israel’s killer drone arsenal and is a primary provider of mortar munitions, electronic warfare, signal intelligence technology, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, and flechette projectiles to the settler apartheid state. Elbit Hermes 450 drones were used in the 2024 World Central Kitchen massacre in Gaza and the murder of 164 Palestinian children in Gaza in 2014.
Elbit has been a member of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) since 2017. Through the ILP, Elbit is able to monitor MIT research developments, identify MIT resources of interest, arrange face-to-face meetings with MIT faculty, advise on research sponsorship and technology licensing opportunities, and link up to MIT-connected startups. Elbit has also participated in MIT ConnecTech, a Hillel program connecting MIT to Israeli start-ups that show MIT’s deep commitment to Elbit’s work. MIT PI Daniela Rus, whose research is partially funded by IMOD, also collaborates with Elbit AI scientists.
Maersk is one of the largest shipping companies in the world. From October 2023 to June 2024, Maersk transported more than $300 million of weapons components for major arms manufacturers to the US. About 69% of Israel’s weapons are sent from the US. In addition to US military cargo planes and ships, Maersk itself ships those weapons as part of its Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement (VISA) and the Maritime Security Program (MSP) with the US Department of Defense. Maersk actively transports millions of pounds of military goods, including hundreds of armored and tactical vehicles and their components to the Israeli military for use in Gaza.
Since 2009, Maersk has been one of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) supply chain exchange partners. In 2021 Maersk announced a “landmark agreement” with CTL to deepen research relationships, sponsoring multiple research papers at MIT focusing on automating the shipping industry. Maersk’s 2023 collaboration with the Ashdod port, “builds on an earlier innovation agreement” with MIT. Ashdod is uniquely positioned next to Gaza and is defined as “essential state infrastructure” by the Israeli government. The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed that 2500 tons of weapons were shipped from the US to the port of Ashdod in November 2024.
Lockheed Martin is a global weapons manufacturer that has sold several billion dollars of weapons to the apartheid state of Israel. In particular, Lockheed has supplied the Israeli government with AGM-1149R9X Hellfire missiles, F-16 and F-35 attack aircraft, and heavy artillery which they have used to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza over the past year. For instance, Lockheed’s Hellfire missiles were used to conduct the Al-Shifa hospital massacre.
Since 2019, MIT International Science and Technology Initiative Israel (MISTI-Israel) has administered a Lockheed Martin Seed Fund to connect students and researchers at MIT to Lockheed Martin’s projects in Israel. MISTI-Israel discontinued the seed fund in 2023 after months of protest, including letter deliveries, sit-ins, and a public information campaign. Lockheed Martin’s recruiting efforts were further disrupted at the 2024 MIT Fall Career Fair. That fight continues: Lockheed Martin still sponsors seed funds at MIT under MISTI-Germany and MISTI-Poland. Lockheed Martin has been a member of the MIT Energy Initiative since 2009. In 2017, it signed a ‘master agreement’ for long-term research collaborations with MIT, led by the Institute’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and in collaboration with MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
The complicity outlined above is far from complete. MIT also maintains ties to the United Arab Emirates through its DesignX Dubai startup accelerator and institutional research connections to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, among other ties. The UAE is known to be funding, laundering for, and supplying the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Sudan in their genocide against primarily non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur, al-Gezira, and other regions. In response, MIT’s student activists have called on MIT to divest from these ties to the UAE in an open letter. We are certain there is more complicity to be found within MIT’s classrooms, career fairs, and laboratories. Our research primer will continue to be a living document, updated to include new information as we discover it. We commit ourselves to exposing and dismantling the war machine wherever it manifests, including and especially at institutes of higher education. We will hold MIT accountable to history.