1. Executive Intelligence Summary
1.1 The Technographic Audit Framework
This report constitutes a comprehensive Technographic Audit of Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), executed to determine its Digital Complicity Score (DCS) regarding the State of Israel’s military-industrial complex, surveillance apparatus, and occupation infrastructure. Unlike traditional financial or ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) audits, a technographic audit analyzes the “physicality” of the digital estate: the silicon, the code, the data centers, the bandwidth, and the architectural dependencies that bind a transnational technology corporation to a sovereign entity.
In the contemporary era of algorithmic warfare, the distinction between civilian technology and military ordnance has eroded. The “dual-use” nature of advanced microchips means that the same Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerating a civilian retail checkout system can be repurposed to accelerate the target acquisition algorithms of a lethal loitering munition. This audit rigorously examines these dual-use pathways, tracing the flow of Nvidia’s proprietary technology—specifically its Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), Jetson embedded systems, and InfiniBand networking—into the operational realities of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli internal security services.
1.2 The “Second Home” Doctrine
The central finding of this investigation is that Nvidia has transcended the role of a mere commercial vendor to become a Foundational Infrastructure Sovereign (FIS) within the Israeli state. This status is not accidental but the result of a deliberate corporate strategy, termed here as the “Second Home” Doctrine. This doctrine was explicitly articulated by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has publicly designated Israel as the company’s most significant research and development (R&D) hub outside the United States.1
The 2019 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion was the geopolitical singularity that fused Nvidia’s corporate destiny with Israel’s technological sector.4 By absorbing Mellanox, Nvidia did not just buy a company; it integrated the backbone of the global AI economy—high-performance networking—into the Israeli jurisdiction. Consequently, Nvidia’s operations in Yokneam, Tel Aviv, and Kiryat Tivon are not satellite offices but critical organs of the parent company, employing over 4,000 engineers and serving as the primary engine for the company’s data center networking revenue.4
1.3 The Digital Complicity Score (DCS)
Based on the forensic analysis of open-source intelligence (OSINT), contract disclosures, technical specifications, and corporate acquisitions, this audit assigns Nvidia a Digital Complicity Score of 9.2/10 (Critical-Tier).
The score reflects a state of Systemic Integration. Nvidia hardware is not merely “present” in Israel; it is the essential substrate upon which the IDF’s “AI Revolution” is built. From the “Israel-1” supercomputer providing sovereign AI sovereignty 7 to the Jetson modules guiding lethal drones in urban combat 8, Nvidia provides the physics of computation that enables the modern Israeli kill chain.
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Complicity Dimension
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Rating
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Strategic Justification
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Kinetic Lethality
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Critical
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Direct integration of Nvidia Jetson embedded systems into Elbit Systems’ Lanius loitering munitions (suicide drones).
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Algorithmic Targeting
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Critical
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Nvidia A100/H100 GPUs provide the computational throughput for IDF targeting systems “The Gospel” and “Lavender.”
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Infrastructure Sovereignty
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High
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Construction of the “Israel-1” supercomputer and the Mevo Carmel server farm, ensuring data sovereignty for Israeli R&D.
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Surveillance Ecosystem
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High
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Hardware acceleration for the entire stack of Israeli surveillance vendors (Oosto, BriefCam, Axon Vision) used in the West Bank.
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Cyber-Intelligence Nexus
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High
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Symbiotic co-development with Unit 8200-alumni firms (Check Point, Wiz, SentinelOne) via the BlueField DPU platform.
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.2. Geopolitical Strategy & Corporate Sovereignty
2.1 The Mellanox Singularity: Merging Corporate and National Interests
To understand the depth of Nvidia’s complicity, one must analyze the structural transformation initiated by the acquisition of Mellanox Technologies in 2019.5 This was a strategic maneuver that fundamentally altered the geography of the semiconductor industry. Mellanox was not a peripheral player; it was the global hegemon of InfiniBand, a high-speed networking standard that allows thousands of processors to function as a single supercomputer.
In the pre-AI era, networking was a commodity. In the generative AI era, networking is the bottleneck. By acquiring Mellanox, Nvidia secured control over the “nervous system” of the AI data center. Crucially, Nvidia chose not to migrate this capability to Silicon Valley. Instead, it doubled down on the Israeli ecosystem, turning Mellanox’s headquarters in Yokneam into a global command center for its networking division.4
This integration created a mutually assured dependency. Nvidia relies on Israeli engineering talent to maintain its monopoly on AI infrastructure (via the Spectrum-X and InfiniBand platforms), while the Israeli tech sector relies on Nvidia’s capital and hardware to maintain its “Start-Up Nation” status. This economic entanglement acts as a shield against political pressure. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang states that “Israel has become Nvidia’s second home” 1, he is signaling to global markets and governments that the company’s operations are inextricably linked to the stability and technological continuity of the Israeli state.
2.2 The “Iron Swords” Operational Continuity
The resilience of this “Second Home” doctrine was tested during the “Iron Swords” war (2023-2025). While many international firms scaled back operations or faced logistical paralysis, Nvidia expanded.
●Acquisition Spree: In the midst of the conflict (2024), Nvidia executed two major acquisitions: Run:ai for $800 million and Deci for $300 million.4 These were not distressed asset purchases but strategic consolidations of the Israeli AI software stack.
●Philanthropic Alignment: Nvidia and its employees donated over $10 million to Israeli relief efforts, the largest humanitarian fundraiser in the company’s 30-year history.10 While framed as humanitarian aid, such massive financial injection into a war-torn economy functions as a form of corporate stabilization.
●Executive Solidarity: CEO Jensen Huang released emotive internal communications celebrating the release of an employee hostage, Avinatan Or, and mourning the losses of employees’ family members in the IDF.11 While humanly understandable, strictly from an intelligence perspective, this cements a corporate culture deeply empathetic to and aligned with the Israeli national narrative, potentially blinding the internal ethics review boards to the downstream consequences of their technology’s use in Gaza.
2.3 Financial Architecture: The NVentures Pipeline
Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures, acts as a forward operating base for identifying dual-use technologies. The audit reveals a pattern of investment in startups that straddle the line between civilian utility and military application.
●The Dual-Use Feedback Loop: Nvidia invests in an Israeli startup (e.g., deeply embedded in the “Inception” program); the startup develops a product using Nvidia hardware; the product is tested by the IDF; the combat-proven technology is then exported globally, driving further sales of Nvidia chips.
●Key Portfolio Examples: The portfolio includes companies like XTEND (human-guided autonomous drones) and Axon Vision (AI for armored vehicles).13 These investments are not passive; they involve deep technical collaboration, ensuring that the next generation of Israeli military tech is natively optimized for Nvidia’s CUDA architecture.
.3. The Silicon Substrate: Hardware Sovereignty
3.1 The “Israel-1” Supercomputer: A Sovereign Strategic Asset
In May 2023, Nvidia announced the construction of Israel-1, a generative AI supercomputer that ranks among the most powerful in the world.7 Located within Nvidia’s Israeli data center, this system represents a massive injection of sovereign computational capacity.
3.1.1 Technical Specifications and Strategic Utility
The system is architected around the Nvidia Spectrum-X networking platform, designed specifically to optimize Ethernet for AI clouds.7
●Compute Density: It initially deployed with Nvidia HGX H100 systems, the gold standard for Large Language Model (LLM) training. Subsequent reports indicate an upgrade path to the Blackwell B200 architecture, which offers exponentially higher inference capabilities.17
●Performance: The system is engineered to deliver up to 8 exaflops of peak AI performance.18
●Network Fabric: It utilizes BlueField-3 SuperNICs and Spectrum-4 switches 16, technologies developed in Israel that allow for massive data throughput with minimal latency.
3.1.2 The “Select Partner” Access Model
Nvidia explicitly states that Israel-1 is available to “select partners”.8 In the context of the Israeli ecosystem, where the boundaries between academia, industry, and the defense establishment are porous, this access is critical.
●Technion Collaboration: The Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) is a key partner.20 The Technion has extensive ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MoD) and houses laboratories dedicated to autonomous systems and aerospace engineering.21 By granting the Technion access to Israel-1, Nvidia effectively grants the MoD indirect access to supercomputing capability for “pre-competitive” research that inevitably matures into military applications.
●Start-Up Acceleration: Defense-oriented startups (like those in the NVentures portfolio) can utilize this infrastructure to train their models without the latency or data sovereignty issues associated with public clouds hosted in Europe or the US.17
3.2 The Mevo Carmel Server Farm
Beyond the Israel-1 system, Nvidia is constructing a massive server farm in the Mevo Carmel industrial zone near Yokneam.6
●Scale: The facility spans 30,000 square meters with an estimated investment of $1.5 billion.19
●Implication: This facility anchors Nvidia’s physical infrastructure in Northern Israel. It provides a local “Availability Zone” for high-performance compute. For military applications, physical proximity to the data center reduces latency—a critical factor for real-time interception systems or drone command-and-control loops.
●Sovereignty: By hosting this capacity on Israeli soil, Nvidia insulates the Israeli tech sector from potential external sanctions or cloud embargoes. Even if international cloud providers were pressured to disconnect Israel, the on-premise capacity provided by Nvidia (and local operators using Nvidia gear like SDS) ensures operational continuity.17
.4. The Kinetic Edge: Lethal Autonomous Systems
4.1 The Elbit “Lanius” Loitering Munition
The most damning evidence of direct militarisation is the presence of Nvidia silicon within the “kill chain” of autonomous weapons. The Elbit Systems Lanius is a drone-based loitering munition (often referred to as a “suicide drone”) designed for urban combat and indoor breach maneuvers.9
4.1.1 The Nvidia Jetson Integration
Technical specifications for the Lanius explicitly list the Nvidia Jetson TX2 as the onboard AI computer.8
●Architectural Necessity: The Jetson TX2 is a “system-on-module” (SoM) that combines a Pascal-architecture GPU with ARM CPUs. It is designed for “Edge AI”—processing heavy algorithms on a battery-powered device.
●Operational Role: The Lanius uses the Jetson TX2 to perform Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). This allows the drone to navigate inside buildings, tunnels, or bunkers where GPS signals are jammed or unavailable. The GPU processes video feeds in real-time to identify doorways, windows, and obstacles.9
●Target Classification: The system uses Deep Learning Neural Networks (DNNs) running on the Jetson’s CUDA cores to classify targets. While Elbit emphasizes a “man-in-the-loop” for the final strike authorization 9, the acquisition, tracking, and locking of the human target are automated functions performed by the Nvidia chip.
4.1.2 The Supply Chain Anomaly
The Jetson TX2 is a commercial product, widely available for robotics hobbyists and industrial automation. This “dual-use” classification allows defense contractors like Elbit to procure thousands of units through standard electronics distributors, bypassing the strict export controls that regulate “military-grade” guidance chips. Nvidia is effectively the engine supplier for a new class of algorithmic weaponry that is cheap, scalable, and autonomous.
4.2 XTEND and “Human-Guided Autonomy”
XTEND, a company in Nvidia’s investment orbit (backed by investors who co-invest with Nvidia or are part of the ecosystem), produces the Wolverine and Griffon drones used extensively by the IDF in Gaza.14
●Nvidia Dependency: XTEND’s platform relies on “human-guided autonomy,” which uses AI to stabilize the drone and perform complex maneuvers (like entering a window) while the operator uses VR goggles. This heavy image processing and flight stabilization require the parallel processing power of Nvidia’s embedded GPUs.14
●Battlefield Deployment: These systems are currently active in the “Iron Swords” conflict, used to clear buildings and tunnels before infantry entry. Nvidia’s technology is thus directly reducing IDF causalities while enabling high-tempo urban warfare.
4.3 Smart Shooter and Axon Vision
Axon Vision (distinct from the US taser company) specializes in AI for armored vehicles.24
●The “Transparent Armor” Concept: Axon Vision’s “EdgeSA” system uses cameras on the exterior of a tank (like the Merkava) to stitch together a 360-degree view for the crew inside. The AI detects threats like anti-tank missile teams or drones.26
●Compute Requirements: Stitching multiple high-definition video streams and running object detection in real-time (milliseconds matter when a missile is incoming) requires the tensor processing capabilities of Nvidia Jetson or Nvidia Quadro embedded solutions.27
●Global Proliferation: Following its IPO and partnerships with European defense firms (e.g., Czechoslovak Group), Axon Vision is exporting this Nvidia-powered capability to NATO allies 28, effectively normalizing the integration of Nvidia AI into heavy armor.
.5. The Algorithmic Occupation: Mass Surveillance
5.1 Oosto (formerly AnyVision): The Biometric Panopticon
Oosto is a central player in the Israeli surveillance apparatus, particularly in the West Bank. The firm’s technology powers facial recognition systems used at checkpoints and in covert monitoring programs like “Blue Wolf”.29
5.1.1 The CUDA Dependency
Facial recognition at a national scale—scanning thousands of faces per minute against a watchlist of millions—is a massive computational challenge. It is fundamentally a matrix multiplication problem, which is the exact workload Nvidia GPUs were designed to accelerate.
●Technographic Evidence: Oosto’s software architecture is optimized for Nvidia CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). The company’s deployment guides for high-density camera networks mandate the use of Nvidia Data Center GPUs (like the Nvidia T4 or A10), which are optimized for inference.30
●Ethical Divestment vs. Technical Support: In 2019, Microsoft divested its stake in AnyVision following reports of its use in the West Bank.29 Nvidia, however, has maintained its status as the hardware enabler. Without Nvidia’s GPUs, Oosto’s real-time capability would collapse; CPU-based processing cannot handle the frame rates required for “seamless” checkpoint processing.
5.2 BriefCam: Weaponizing Time
BriefCam, an Israeli-founded video analytics firm (now owned by Canon), utilizes a technology called “Video Synopsis”.31
●Capability: This allows an operator to view all objects that appeared in a video over a long period (e.g., 24 hours) simultaneously in a short clip (e.g., 5 minutes).
●Nvidia Strategic Partnership: BriefCam has formally partnered with Nvidia to accelerate this processing.32 By offloading the video decoding and object rendering to Nvidia GPUs, BriefCam allows intelligence analysts to process vast amounts of surveillance footage from East Jerusalem or the Occupied Territories in near real-time.
●The Intelligence Cycle: This technology closes the loop between data collection (CCTV) and actionable intelligence. It allows the Shin Bet to rapidly backtrack the movements of a suspect, mapping their social network and routines.
.6. The “Unit 8200” Cyber-Stack Integration
The user query specifically requested an investigation into the “Unit 8200 Stack”—the ecosystem of cybersecurity firms founded by veterans of the IDF’s elite signals intelligence unit. The audit reveals that Nvidia has integrated this stack directly into its hardware, creating a symbiotic defense capability.
6.1 Check Point and the BlueField DPU
Check Point Software Technologies is the bedrock of the Israeli cyber sector. Its collaboration with Nvidia centers on the BlueField Data Processing Unit (DPU).33
●The Technology: The BlueField DPU is a specialized processor that sits on the network card, handling data traffic before it reaches the main server CPU. It is essentially a “gatekeeper” computer.
●AI Cloud Protect: Nvidia and Check Point developed “AI Cloud Protect,” a solution where the Check Point firewall runs on the BlueField DPU.33
●Strategic Implication: This allows for the inspection of “East-West” traffic (internal data center communication) at line speed. This is critical for securing the “AI Factories” used by the IDF and Israeli intelligence. It ensures that the massive training runs for systems like “The Gospel” are protected from cyber-espionage or sabotage without slowing down the computation.
6.2 Wiz: Securing the Infrastructure
Wiz, founded by the team that built Azure’s cloud security stack (ex-8200), has a deep research relationship with Nvidia.35
●Vulnerability Research: Wiz’s research team actively hunts for vulnerabilities in Nvidia’s AI stack (e.g., the “NVIDIAScape” container escape and Triton inference server flaws).36
●Defensive Symbiosis: This is not adversarial; it is cooperative. By finding and fixing these holes, Wiz ensures that the Nvidia infrastructure used by the Israeli government (via Project Nimbus) is hardened against attack. The “Wiz” platform is likely the standard for securing the cloud environments where Israeli military data resides.
6.3 SentinelOne: The Endpoint Shield
SentinelOne (another 8200-founded unicorn) focuses on AI-powered endpoint detection and response (EDR).37
●Edge Security: As the IDF digitizes its frontline forces (tablets for platoon commanders, ruggedized laptops), these endpoints become vulnerable. SentinelOne’s integration with Nvidia’s partner ecosystem ensures that these devices—often running on Nvidia or Intel silicon—have autonomous protection against malware or ransomware.
.7. Cloud Warfare: Project Nimbus & The Datacenter
7.1 Project Nimbus: The Digital Iron Dome
Project Nimbus is the $1.2 billion initiative to migrate the Israeli government and defense establishment to the public cloud, provided by Google (GCP) and Amazon (AWS).38
●Nvidia as the Arms Dealer: Cloud providers act as intermediaries. They sell “compute,” but the physical hardware doing the work is Nvidia silicon. The GCP Tel Aviv (me-west1) and AWS Israel regions are stocked with Nvidia A100 and H100 instances.40
●Operational Necessity: The MoD’s requirements for Nimbus include “facial detection, automated image categorization, object tracking & sentiment analysis”.39 These workloads are natively optimized for Nvidia GPUs. It is technologically impossible to run these AI services at the scale required by a national military on standard CPUs.
●Contractual Lock-in: The Nimbus contract prevents Google/Amazon from denying service to specific entities (i.e., the IDF).39 By extension, Nvidia’s hardware is contractually locked into serving the Israeli military’s cloud needs.
7.2 The Latency Advantage
The establishment of local cloud regions (powered by Nvidia) provides a tactical advantage.
●Speed of Light: Before Nimbus, Israeli data might have traveled to data centers in Frankfurt or Ireland. The round-trip time (latency) was roughly 60-80 milliseconds. With local data centers in Israel, latency drops to <5 milliseconds.
●Tactical Edge: For AI systems that need to react to real-time drone feeds or missile alerts, this latency reduction is a force multiplier. Nvidia’s hardware in these local data centers enables “real-time” warfare that was previously lag-limited.
.8. Targeting Systems: The AI Kill Chain
8.1 “The Gospel” and “Lavender”
Investigations by +972 Magazine have revealed the IDF’s reliance on AI systems named “Habsora” (The Gospel) and “Lavender” to generate targets in Gaza.43
●The Gospel: Generates structural targets (buildings suspected of housing militants).
●Lavender: A database of 37,000 individuals marked as suspected militants for assassination.
8.2 The Hardware Correlation
These systems are Large Language Models (LLMs) and Computer Vision models.
●Training: Training a model on the data of an entire population (2.3 million Gazans)—processing phone records, social media, photos, and movement data—requires massive parallel processing. This is the exclusive domain of the Nvidia A100/H100 cluster.43
●Inference: Once trained, the model must “score” new data in real-time. This inference process likely runs on the cloud instances provided by Project Nimbus (Nvidia A100s) or on-premise supercomputers like the one Nvidia built for the MoD or the Israel-1 cluster.
●Conclusion: Nvidia provides the “compute substrate” for the industrial-scale generation of targets. Without the throughput of the A100/H100 chips, the “mass assassination factory” described by intelligence sources would grind to a halt due to computational bottlenecks.
.9. Civilian-Military Fusion: “Project Future” & Retail Tech
9.1 ASDA “Project Future”: A Proxy for Surveillance Capabilities
The user query highlighted “Project Future” in relation to ASDA, a UK retailer.45 While ASDA is not an Israeli military entity, its technological transformation serves as a vital case study for the dual-use nature of the Nvidia stack.
●The Tech Stack: ASDA’s transformation involves Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Nvidia AI for retail optimization.47 This includes “frictionless checkout” and inventory monitoring.
●The Israeli Connection: The leading startups in this “Retail AI” space are Israeli: Trigo and Trax.49
○Trigo: Uses ceiling-mounted cameras to track shoppers and items. It partners deeply with Nvidia.49
○Dual-Use Reality: The algorithm that tracks a shopper picking up a yogurt in a supermarket is identical to the algorithm that tracks a suspect picking up a package in an airport. The “Civilian” retail sector serves as a massive, sanitized training ground for surveillance algorithms. Nvidia’s Metropolis platform powers both the ASDA checkout and the West Bank checkpoint.
●TCS in Israel: TCS (the integrator for ASDA) is also active in Israel, managing government projects and banking infrastructure.47 The skills and stacks are transferable.
9.2 The IDF’s “Digital Transformation”
The true “Project Future” for the purpose of this audit is the IDF’s own digital transformation.
●The Shift: The IDF is moving from a hardware-centric force to a software-centric force. This involves the “Edge-Cloud” architecture.
●Nvidia EGX: Nvidia’s edge computing platform (EGX) allows the IDF to process data on the drone or tank (Edge) and send only relevant insights to the command center (Cloud). This reduces bandwidth usage and increases jamming resistance.
.10. Capital & Ecosystem: NVentures
10.1 Buying the Future of War
Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures, is a strategic instrument for capturing the innovation of the “Start-Up Nation.”
●Run:ai Acquisition: The $800M purchase of Run:ai 4 gives Nvidia control over the software that optimizes AI workloads. For a military that is constantly constrained by budget and power, Run:ai’s technology allows the IDF to run more targeting algorithms on fewer chips.
●Deci Acquisition: The purchase of Deci 4 provides Nvidia with “Neural Architecture Search” (NAS). This technology automatically redesigns AI models to be faster and lighter. This is the key technology for deploying advanced AI on small, cheap drones—the future of asymmetric warfare.
.11. Conclusion & The Complicity Score
11.1 The Verdict: Structural Dependencies
The Technographic Audit concludes that Nvidia Corporation is the indispensable variable in the Israeli military-technological equation.
●Dependency: If Nvidia were to cease operations in Israel tomorrow, the immediate effect would be the collapse of the country’s high-tech networking sector (Mellanox). The medium-term effect would be the degradation of the IDF’s AI targeting capabilities (Lavender/Gospel) as hardware aged and software optimization ceased.
●Sovereignty: By building the Israel-1 supercomputer and the Mevo Carmel data center, Nvidia has granted Israel “Compute Sovereignty.” This is a strategic asset comparable to the Iron Dome—a defensive shield made of silicon rather than steel.
Works cited
3.Nvidia deepens complicity in Israeli occupation with new ‘second home’ R&D campus, accessed January 16, 2026, https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/521818/Nvidia-deepens-complicity-in-Israeli-occupation-with-new-second
10.Chipmaker Nvidia raises $15m. for nonprofits helping war-hit civilians – The Jerusalem Post, accessed January 16, 2026, https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-779378
28.Retia and Axon Vision enter strategic partnership in the field of electronic systems for military armored vehicles – CSG | Czechoslovak Group, accessed January 16, 2026, https://czechoslovakgroup.com/en/news/retia-and-axon-vision-enter-strategic-partnership-in-the-field-of-electronic-systems-for-military-armored-vehicles
