Oracle Corporation

Oracle started as a project for the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, it is named after Project Oracle, a 1970s CIA operation on which Ellison worked. For some time, the CIA was Oracle’s only customer, until it began to win contracts with other agencies of the U.S. national security state. Today, although Oracle’s customer base is much wider, it maintains its role as the privatized face of the CIA. Yet if Oracle is close to Washington and Langley, it is perhaps even more intimately tied to the State of Israel. An avowed Zionist, Ellison has worked tirelessly to advance Israel’s political project. Among his closest personal friends is Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed on his private island in Hawaii. Ellison was so impressed and confident in the Israeli prime minister that he offered him a seat on his company’s board, replete with a salary of $450,000. While Oracle has signed multiple lucrative contracts with the Israeli national security state, Ellison himself has personally bankrolled the Israeli Defense Forces, giving tens of millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF, an organization that purchases equipment for the Israeli military. This included a $16.6 million pledge (the largest single donation the group has received) to build a new training facility for soldiers defending what he called “our home.”