The American Universities Programming Israel’s Killer Drones |
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The American Universities Programming Israel’s Killer Drones
Industry partnerships in higher education are pushing STEM graduates into the business of weapons manufacturing and genocide profiteering.
Students at the University of Central Florida take part in a campus protest against the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza.
If you’re a computer science student at the University of Central Florida, you may have the opportunity to build your resume by developing tracking technology for Israeli drones used to commit genocide in Palestine.
The nationwide student movement against US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza has brought renewed attention to the military ties at colleges and universities at a level not seen since the anti–Vietnam War movement. In 2024, the Pentagon provided over $10 billion in research grants to US universities. This doesn’t account for additional university funding that came directly from weapons contractors, nor does it account for funding directly from the Israeli military-industrial complex.
The University of Central Florida (UCF) is one recipient of such funding. The university’s Center for Research in Computer Vision maintains an “industry partnership” with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest manufacturer of drone weapons, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Elbit’s products include the missile-carrying Hermes 450 UAV and the “suicide drone” SkyStriker UAV. Elbit’s weapons have been used to target civilian homes and infrastructure in Gaza.
According to its website, the purpose of the Center for Research in Computer Vision is to “promote basic research in computer vision and its applications in all related areas including National Defense & Intelligence, Homeland Security, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences and Biotechnology and Robotics.” An internal slideshow from UCF’s Computer Vision program also mentions a $635,000 partnership with American military contractor DRS, a $550,000 partnership with weapons giant Lockheed Martin, and a $350,000 partnership with British aerospace company QinetiQ. All three of these corporations actively supply equipment that has been used to kill civilians in Gaza
In 2020, Dr. Mubarak Shah and Dr. Abhijit Mahalanobis, two of the Computer Vision program’s leading researchers, received a $200,000 grant directly from Elbit Systems’s American subsidiary to develop “human activity recognition” technology. Mahalanobis received an additional grant of $60,000 from Elbit for “Algorithms for object detection and human activity recognition.”
Under Shah’s leadership, the Computer Vision program has become an international hub for research on UAV weapons, AI “target acquisition” programs, and other surveillance technology.........