Drones ‘tested in genocide and refined on Palestinians’ are swarming American cities

AI-powered surveillance drones used by the Israeli occupation forces to carry out genocide in Gaza are now being deployed across the United States to monitor protesters and civilians.

Built by the US-based company Skydio, these autonomous drones were shipped to Israel in the early days of the onslaught on Gaza, where they were tested and refined in live combat conditions. 

READ: Gaza genocide fuels Israel’s boom in ‘battle-tested’ weapons industry

Now, those same drones are being launched across major American cities by hundreds of law enforcement agencies, surveilling dissent and capturing vast quantities of visual data, according a report by ¡Do Not Panic! and later expanded upon by The Grayzone.

The drones are said to be operating in more than 800 US law enforcement and security agencies across the country, up from just 320 in March 2024. They are being launched hundreds of times daily in cities including New York, Chicago, Miami and Atlanta.

These drones, engineered for surveillance and battlefield utility, have the ability to autonomously navigate ‘GPS-denied environments’ locations where GPS doesn’t work, track individuals using thermal imaging and facial recognition, and upload imagery to cloud-based databases for law enforcement use. This has raised alarms among civil liberties advocates and anti-surveillance campaigners, especially as many of these drones are being used against anti-genocide protestors.

The AI system powering the drones is run on Nvidia chips. Information captured by the drones is automatically fed into Axon Evidence — a digital evidence system created by the controversial US firm Axon, also known for manufacturing Tasers and body cameras. Axon is a major investor in Skydio and also supplies equipment to Israeli police and prison services accused of systematically torturing Palestinian detainees.

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Skydio’s links to the Israeli military-industrial complex are extensive. It maintains an office in Israel and partners with DefenceSync, a military drone contractor that facilitates supply to the Israeli occupation forces. It has received investment from Israeli-American venture capital firms whose founders are known for their Zionist affiliations and extensive business ties with Israel’s high-tech military sector. Other investors include firms led by former IDF cyber officers and Israeli tech executives.

Skydio drones were used to monitor the “No Kings” protests, anti-genocide encampments at Yale University and gatherings across US campuses. In New York alone, the police launched over 20,000 drone missions in less than a year. In Miami, they have been used to surveil beach-goers and spring break events. In Atlanta, they are stationed permanently at the site of the new Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City,” to monitor dissent.

Skydio’s entry into the US defence and security space is not limited to local police. It is also under contract with the Department of Defense, raising questions about how data collected on civilians might be shared between military and civilian agencies.

Critics say this is another example of Israel’s colonial practices being exported. Gaza, once again, served as the testing ground, a laboratory of oppression. As one researcher noted, “What happens in Gaza doesn’t stay in Gaza.”

The expansion of such surveillance capabilities, born in the context of military occupation and genocide, into American cities marks a troubling development in global policing and the militarisation of civilian life. It exposes not just the complicity of US institutions in Israeli war crimes, but also how those same tools are repurposed to control populations domestically.

READ: War Against the People