Statement On Baillie Gifford's Investments (November 2023)

The art world’s unthinking complicity in the genocide of Palestinians - part II

It’s time to talk about Baillie Gifford.

Many arts and culture organisations throughout Scotland have received funding from Edinburgh-based asset management firm Baillie Gifford. But how many of them are aware that Baillie Gifford invests significantly in tech and cybersecurity companies with connections to the Israeli state, currently carrying out war crimes and genocide in Palestine.

Baillie Gifford’s investments in fossil fuels received significant publicity when Greta Thunberg cancelled a planned appearance at Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2023.i Yet many people remain unaware of the firm’s financial investments in companies active in Israel.

Baillie Gifford currently has nearly £10 billion invested in companies with direct or indirect links to Israel's defence, tech and cybersecurity industries. This is more than double the £4.5 billion that it has invested in oil and gas companies.ii

There is hardly a major cultural institution in Edinburgh that has not received financial support from Baillie Gifford. The firm is a regular sponsor of exhibitions at both the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Museums of Scotland. Baillie Gifford regularly supports Glasgow Life, Scottish Ballet, and Scottish Opera, among many others.

Several current or former directors at Baillie Gifford hold positions of power across the Scottish cultural sector. For example, Nicholas Thomas, director of Baillie Gifford Overseas Investment is also chairman of the board of directors at Fruitmarket art gallery, Edinburgh.

Baillie Gifford’s investments with ties to the Israeli state include:

Nvidia

Baillie Gifford owns £5.4 billion worth of stock in US company Nvidia, makers of computer chips, GPUs and increasingly specialising in artificial intelligence.iii

In 2020, Nvidia bought Israeli-US company, Mellanox Technologies, to expand its footprint in the high-performance computing market. Nvidia's headquarters is in the US, but following the acquisition of Mellanox, its largest R&D operation outside the US is in Israel, where it also runs a startup accelerator programme with 800 Israeli startups.iv

Nvidia's graphics, GPU and processing technologies are used by businesses, data centres and defence systems. Many Nvidia computing products are specifically marketed for use in military and aerospace.v

Earlier this summer, Bloomberg reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are increasingly and controversially using artificial intelligence to “choose targets for air strikes and organise wartime logistics”.vi Nvidia is currently building Israel's most powerful artificial intelligence supercomputer.vii

Following the murder by the Israeli army of over 9,000 Palestinians, including nearly 4,000 children, founder of Mellanox Technologies, Eyal Waldman, gave an interview in which he said:

“What we’re doing is defense, not offense. […] This is the most ethical army in the world.”viii

Amazon

Baillie Gifford owns around £4.3 billion worth of stock in Amazon.ix Amazon is a major focus of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement for freedom, justice and equality.x

In 2021, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud signed a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing to the Israeli government and military as part of ‘Project Nimbus’.xi xii The contract was signed the same week that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – killing nearly 250 people, including more than 60 children.xiii

Through this contract, Amazon and Google technologies support surveillance, military assaults, racist population databases and security checkpoints.xiv Among other things, Amazon’s cloud services support data for the Israel Land Authority (ILA), a government agency involved in discriminatory and illegal settlements which expel Palestinians from their homelands.xv Amazon and Google are therefore enabling apartheid and entrenching the oppression of Palestinians.

Opposition to Amazon’s and Google’s participation in Project Nimbus has been widespread, coordinated by a coalition called NoTechforApartheid, (with nearly 50,000 signatories as of October 2023), led by activist groups Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change.xvi Google and Amazon employees have also held ongoing protests against Project Nimbus since 2021.xvii

The Israeli government’s terms of contract for Project Nimbus prevent Amazon and Google from halting services on the basis of boycott pressure.xviii The only way to avoid complicity is to divest.

CyberArk

Baillie Gifford owns £30 million worth of stock in CyberArk, an Israeli cybersecurity solutions provider.xix

CyberArk’s close relationship with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is reflected by the company's founders and management team. Co-founder Udi Mokady served in Unit 8200, the signals and web intelligence unit that spies on Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank.xx xxi Co-founder Alon Cohen was formerly in charge of systems and security at the IDF Central Data Processing Unit.xxii Recently appointed Global Chief Information Officer, Omer Grossman, was head of IDF's Cyber Defence Operations Center for more than 25 years.xxiii

CyberArk epitomises the revolving door between tech corporations, academia, and the Israeli military.

In 2021, CyberArk opened a new cybersecurity R&D centre at the Gav-Yam Negev Tech Park, which has close links to the nearby Israel Defense Force IT division.xxiv The Israeli government's National Cyber Campus and 70 other development centres and startups are also situated in the technology park.xxv

Chen Bitan, general manager of CyberArk Israel, describes the tech park as a “unique ecosystem of government agencies, academia, and industry”.xxvi

Additional Investments

Baillie Gifford holds direct investments in a number of other companies which are actively involved with illegal Israeli settlements, including Booking Holdings,xxvii Cemexxxviii and Cisco Systems.xxix

We are mapping these connections and will publish more information in due course.

What now?

Since news of Baillie Gifford’s investments in fossil fuels, campaign group Fossil Free Books has urged the eleven literary festivals sponsored by Baillie Gifford to pressure the asset manager to divest from fossil fuels.xxx So far, this has had little effect and visual art organisations have remained almost silent on the subject.

Given Baillie Gifford’s investments in companies with connections to the Israeli state, currently committing genocide in Gaza, this silence has to end.

We recognise that private sponsorship is a necessity for many arts organisations in Scotland, struggling from years of cuts to public funding, the impact of politically-motivated austerity and the ongoing cost of living crisis.

We are not yet calling upon them to sever their ties with Baillie Gifford.

We call on arts organisations and their trustees to use their long-standing relationships with key decision-makers at Baillie Gifford to demand the company immediately divest of all holdings in stock that contributes to the enactment of war crimes and the genocide of Palestinian people.

Art Workers for Palestine Scotland

@artworkersforpalestinescotland

References

i https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/04/greta-thunberg-accuses-edinburgh-book-fe

stival-sponsor-of-greenwashing

ii https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/08/04/literary-greenwashing-in-edinburgh/

iii https://stockzoa.com/fund/baillie-gifford-co/

iv https://www.timesofisrael.com/nvidia-taps-into-israeli-innovation-to-build-generative-ai-cloud-supercomputer/

v https://www.curtisswrightds.com/media-center/blog/nvidia-jetson-military-aerospace

vi https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-16/israel-using-ai-systems-to-plan-deadly-military-operations

vii https://www.curtisswrightds.com/media-center/blog/nvidia-jetson-military-aerospace

viii https://archive.ph/GZKsi#selection-719.28-719.40