BEIRUT — Lebanon has always lived in the crossfire of regional conflicts, but rarely has its digital sovereignty been placed so casually on the negotiating table.

In the space of a few weeks, the state entrusted its public-sector data to Oracle, a CIO structurally tied to the Israeli military and technological complex, and cleared the path for Starlink, a U.S.-controlled satellite system capable of circumventing every Lebanese security and regulatory body.

These moves, adored as “advancement” and “innovation,” expose the country’s core infrastructure at a time of escalating Israeli aggression.

The first shock arrived with the memorandum of understanding between Minister of State for Technology Kamil Chahada and Oracle, ceremonially signed under the eyes of the U.S. ambassador.

What was marketed as a patriotic leap into digital transformation, training 50,000 civil servants in cloud and AI tools, masks a far darker reality: Lebanon is placing its administrative nervous system in the hands of a corporation that is an integral pillar of the Israeli military apparatus.

Oracle has built fortified cloud centers for the Israeli army. It supplies intelligence units with operational software. It even donated equipment to troops operating in Gaza in 2024. This is not a neutral service provider. It is a strategic weapon in the Israeli security ecosystem.

So what exactly does it mean for Lebanese public-sector data, health records, citizen files, infrastructure details, administrative systems, to flow into a framework aligned with the very military that bombs Lebanese villages and violates Lebanese airspace daily?

The question hangs in the air, unanswered and deliberately unasked.

Barely had the Oracle debate begun when another decision was pushed through: granting Starlink a license without serious parliamentary scrutiny. Starlink’s selling point is seductive—fast, reliable satellite internet.

Its danger is far greater: full bypass of Lebanese infrastructure, jurisdiction, and oversight.

Every Lebanese connection would route through U.S.-controlled satellites, subject to American privacy laws that compel companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies.

In practical terms, Lebanese users would be exposed directly to Washington—and by extension to the Israeli enemy—with no judicial, political, or technical protection.

Experts have already warned of devastating financial consequences once Starlink expands beyond its “backup” role; the licensing model siphons value out of the national economy, weakens local ISPs, and drains future tax revenues.

For a country already crawling through economic collapse, this is not a policy, it is a dismantling. And yet the cabinet embraced the scheme enthusiastically, even accepting a “donation” of 151 Starlink units from a barely traceable foreign NGO.

The symbolism is impossible to ignore: Lebanon’s sovereignty handed over in a cardboard box.

The economic risks are grave, but the security implications are existential. Cyber specialists warn that Starlink can identify sensitive coordinates, detect military patterns, and map troop movements, capabilities already documented during the Ukraine war.

If that is what Starlink can do among allies, imagine its visibility over Lebanon, where its closest strategic partner is the Israeli enemy.

At a moment when Israeli aggression is ongoing, airstrikes, assassinations, territorial violations, the timing is not coincidental.

A satellite network controlled by Washington, the Israeli occupation entity’s primary military backer, grants unprecedented reach into Lebanese communications, state systems, and operational logistics.

Yet Lebanese officials continue portraying these developments as “modernization.” But modernization without sovereignty is not progress. It is supervised dependency.

Lebanon does need stable internet and technological renewal. What it does not need is for its digital heartbeat to be monitored, accessed, or manipulated by actors whose strategic interests run directly against Lebanon’s security and stability.

When national survival is at stake, technological naïveté becomes a security liability. In times of war, sovereignty is not a luxury or a slogan. It is the last remaining firewall between a nation and its erasure.