Cisco shareholders will vote Dec. 15 on whether the company should commission an independent third-party review of human-rights risks tied to high-risk customers, as a report by The Guardian describes work for Israeli government clients.
Cisco’s 2026 proxy statement says Proposal No. 5 requests an assessment of risks associated with high-risk customers and end uses, including military and intelligence work. The board recommends voting against it, saying Cisco’s existing human-rights due diligence and disclosures make the requested report unnecessary. The proposal asks Cisco to commission a review; it does not itself conclude that Cisco products caused a particular human-rights harm.
The Guardian reported that a confidential draft memo from September 2025 described outages lasting several hours and repeated crashes in systems serving a client the documents called the “Israel Intelligence Force.” The Guardian quoted the memo as saying the failures “severely impacted critical operations” during the Gaza war. The report said Cisco assigned senior employees and internal teams to address the problems over several months and sent staff for on-site visits.
The Guardian also reported that Israeli intelligence leaders threatened to cancel business after the technical failures. By summer 2025, Cisco described the client as satisfied, the paper said, and an internal presentation called the effort a “customer success story.” A separate 2025 document reviewed by The Guardian said Cisco’s Israeli military-intelligence contracts generated about $67 million in business over three years; the report did not specify the period. Leaked records reviewed by The Guardian listed dozens of Cisco deals pursued in 2026 with Israeli government clients, including intelligence, air force and navy organizations; many were marked as AI-related.
The Associated Press reported in February 2025 that Cisco and Dell provided server infrastructure used by Israel’s military.
Cisco did not respond to The Guardian’s request for comment. The paper reported that an Israeli military spokesperson said the Israel Defense Forces receives services from various companies but declined to discuss particular contracts or services. Cisco’s annual meeting is scheduled for Dec. 15, 2026, at 11 a.m. ET (16:00 UTC), when shareholders are set to vote on the proposal.
