Billionaire Ellison, Major Backer of Israeli Military, Whose Oracle Was a CIA Spinoff, Moves on TikTok after It Was Targeted for Gaza Content

His son just bought Paramount and CBS. The father is also gunning for CNN...“Citizens will be on their best behavior”..."Israeli military did everything they could to minimize civilian casualties."

Sam Husseini

Sep 20, 2025

Glenn Greenwald reports: “Larry Ellison — the Oracle mega-billionaire who has donated millions to the IDF — just had his kid buy Paramount/CBS to have Bari Weiss run, is trying to buy CNN, and now will buy TikTok (with Andreessen Horowitz). Lucky break for Israel as its support collapses in the US.

“CBS News had ‘scandals’ because 60 Minutes reported twice on the carnage in Gaza (it was then owned by Shari Redstone, fanatical Israel supporter). Congress got the votes to ban TikTok only once Dems became convinced it allows too much Israel criticism. Problem solved!”

I reported on the targeting of TikTok last year in “Did the Israel Lobby Push for the TikTok Bill so that its Allies Could Control it?”

As I highlighted then, Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York office of the UN High Commission on Human Rights, warned: “They are not trying to ban #TikTok. [This was the political and media mantra at the time.] They are trying to use government power to force TikTok to be taken over by pro-Israel ownership to silence criticism of #Genocide and #apartheid.” The Wall Street Journal had reported of the bill targeting TikTok: “It was slow going until Oct. 7.”

Ricci Sergienko of RootsAction warned: “‘We have a major TikTok problem. A Gen-Z problem.’ Leaked audio of ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore. THIS is why they’re trying to ban TikTok. This legislation’s practical ban on TikTok would constitute a serious First Amendment violation and an infringement upon free speech.”

I tried to spark a movement to get the users of TikTok to get control of the platform last year. See my posts on X regarding TikTok.

At a gala for the Israeli military, Larry Ellison made the most effusive remarks:

"The renewal of the Jewish state is something that I think touches all of us. For 2,000 years we were a stateless people. Now, we have a country of our own defended by all the brave men and women of the IDF… Keeping the people safe... I feel a deep emotional connection to the state of Israel... Herzliya [area in Israel] has probably got more startups than almost anywhere, other than Silicon Valley... We've actually acquired a number of Israeli companies. We have two CEOs at Oracle, one is Safra Catz and she was born in Israel. Again, we love the country of Israel and will do everything we can to support the country of Israel... [Asked about ‘the Gaza operation’]: One thing we know for certain, that the Israeli military did everything they could to minimize civilian casualties."¹

One of the Israeli firms purchased by Oracle was Crosswise, founded by former operatives of Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the NSA. In 2003, Catz demanded the inscription “Oracle Stands with Israel” be “displayed on all the company’s screens, in more than 180 countries.” See piece on Unit 8200: “Inside Israel's Secret Startup Machine” from Forbes. See “Former Unit 8200 cyber head: ‘Only a cyber equivalent of September 11 attacks will change perceptions’”.

Truthout reported last year: “The largest donation to FIDF may have come in 2017, when Larry Ellison — the co-founder and chairman of Oracle, and who is worth over $200 billion — gave the group $16.6 million. Ellison also donated $10 million in 2014.”

The San Francisco Chronicle in 2002 published the piece “Oracle's coziness with government goes back to its founding / Firm's growth sustained as niche established with federal, state agencies.”

The outlet reported: “The CIA was not just Oracle's first customer. Founded in May 1977, the firm's name came from a CIA project code-named ‘Oracle.’ Company co-founders Larry Ellison, Robert Miner and Ed Oates worked on Project Oracle at a consulting firm, before striking out on their own.” See from Gizmodo in 2014: “Larry Ellison’s Oracle Started As a CIA Project.”

This has similarities to the origins of Facebook and Palantir, as Whitney Webb and Jeremy Loffredo have written. (Palantir has its origins with In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s capital venture arm. Webb has reported on big tech’s connections to Israel and the “the Epstein network”. She’s also noted how much big tech work focuses on “pre-crime” and stemmed from aspects of Total Information Awareness, a project started after 9/11 and headed by John Poindexter — who committed much of the Iran Contra scandal — until public outrage forced parts of it to be pushed to the shadows or effectively privatized. One aspect of Iran Contra was Continuity of Government plans to suspect the US Constitution in a “national emergency”.)

Former CIA director Leon Panetta, who also headed the Pentagon, is on the board of Oracle.

Oracle databases are used by an enormous number of governments and companies. I don’t think we understand the ramifications of that. Lowkey reports: “Many oppose Larry Ellison taking over TikTok, but do they know his firm Oracle stores data of the UK Home Office, Ministry of Defence & NHS? He offered Netanyahu director role & employed relative of the UK PM at the same time as bidding for the contract.” See his video from 2024.

Ellison² has spoken of how mass AI surveillance will ensure “Citizens will be on their best behavior” — rather channeling Total Information Awareness:

On Trump’s second day in office, he hosted Larry Ellison along with Sam Altman (protégé of Palantir chairman Peter Thiel) of OpenAI and Masayoshi Son of Softbank (which funds the Israeli firm Cybereason, see Webb’s “How an Israeli Spy-Linked Tech Firm Gained Access to the US Gov’t’s Most Classified Networks”) at the White House to announce The Stargate Project.

Ellison talked about AI and mRNA being used for good, to tailor remedies for cancer for individuals. Ellison stresses “unifying” data. Max Jones charged early this year that this “Interoperability” would allow “a seemingly decentralized group of vendors to become effectively centralized, as they gain the ability to seamlessly exchange data.” On Sept. 10, Jones notes: “The Pentagon-contracting company Open AI just signed a contract to purchase $300 billion in computing power from the CIA-contracting company Oracle. This is part of OpenAI's ‘Stargate’ project to build out a huge amount of data centers all across the U.S., which will almost certainly be used to enable AI technology to surveil every aspect of your life. With that data, AI, in the hands of the national security state, will dictate whether you are likely to commit a crime like that which occurred today — before you've committed it.”

Antony Loewenstein’s book The Palestine Laboratory is subtitled “How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.”

A lawsuit by Palestinian activists charged Ellison, Sheldon Adelson and other US funders of Israeli projects with war crimes. Middle East Monitor reported: “The lawsuit is being led by Bassem Al-Tamimi from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, father of Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi who was jailed for eight months for slapping an Israeli soldier who trespassed on her family’s land.” Netanyahu reportedly vacationed on Ellison’s Hawaiian island. And Ellison “lobbied and convinced fellow magnate Arnon Milchan to give up the services of his attorney in one of the criminal cases against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to allow him to represent the premier in the case.”

Middle East Eye reported in April: “Paramount under fire for meddling in Gaza coverage after '60 Minutes' producer resigns.” Now, it’s getting worse, with the New York Times reporting: “The new owner of CBS News is weighing giving Ms. Weiss the job of editor in chief or co-president of the network, as part of a broader deal to buy The Free Press, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.” See Alan Macleod at MintPress News report: “Israel’s Biggest US Donor Now Owns CBS” for more on Weiss.

Interestingly, back in 2020, CNBC reported: “Trump agrees to TikTok deal with Oracle and Walmart.” Now, TikTok is removing videos critical of the deal according to a young video maker, @guychristensen_, who urges people to have Rep. Ro Khanna bring in Ellison for a hearing. An issue with that would be that Khanna literally represents Silicon Valley and his biggest funders are not only Google, Apple and J Street PAC — but also Andreessen Horowitz — which is literally part of the deal.

From FAIR:

Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle, is the second-richest billionaire in both the US and the world, and for a brief moment was No. 1 in the world (AP, 9/11/25). …

On Forbes‘ US list, he is sandwiched between Elon Musk, No. 1, who bought the social media network Twitter and rebranded it as X, and Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram. Jeff Bezos, at No. 4, has the Washington Post. Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Nos. 5 and 6, operate the leading search engine as well as one of the most important news aggregators, Google News. Michael Bloomberg, at No. 13, the former New York City mayor, has Bloomberg and its various outlets. …

The New York Post (9/11/25) reports that Ellison father and son are now looking to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which carries with it CNN, creating an unprecedented level of media consolidation.

Larry’s son David Ellison…is the CEO of Skydance, which recently merged with Paramount, giving him control over CBS. … “Paramount, under its new owner, David Ellison, has become the first major Hollywood studio to condemn a boycott of Israeli film institutions that more than 4,000 actors and directors now support,” the New York Times (9/13/25) said.

Among the films David Ellison has produced is Top Gun: Maverick which depicts an attack on nuclear facilities remarkably similar to those that took place against Iran earlier this year. His sister, Megan Ellison, has also produced a number of films including Zero Dark Thirty — widely criticized for a number of reasons including justifying torture.

1

Year and date could not be determined with certainty upon publication deadline.

2

It’s funny writing about Ellison. As a few readers will know, I got my BS from CMU in Applied Math and Logic and Computation. I almost went into this world. I saw the opportunities and I saw the dead-end of it at a certain level. I’ll write about this more. But Ellison is especially funny to me because my college roommate ended up working at Oracle for a time and would tell me how obnoxious Ellison and others in the company were. We’ve long lost touch.