Portland AI Company Sells Drone Targeting Tech to Israeli Arms Giant as City Protesters Demand Answers

A Portland company that makes artificial intelligence systems for identifying targets has shipped hardware to the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems at least ten times since 2024, according to cargo records reviewed by The Intercept. The shipments, which passed through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark International Airport in New Jersey, included Sightline Intelligence's SLA-3000-OEM embedded video processing boards: components the company markets for autonomous target recognition aboard military drones.

The cargo documents, analyzed by Movement Research Unit, a London-based volunteer research organization, show Sightline equipment arrived at Elbit facilities in Karmiel, Rehovot, Holon, and Haifa on December 28, 2024; March 14, 2025; September 4, 2025; and October 20, 2025. Sightline spokesperson Makayla Thomas said the company does not comment on specific customer relationships or deployments, adding that it complies with all applicable laws and regulations governing its business.

Sightline Intelligence describes itself as specializing in \"ultra-low SWaP\" embedded systems that give drones the ability to detect, classify, and track targets in real time. The company was owned by Boston-based private equity firm Artemis until last week, when it announced the sale to Acron Technologies for an undisclosed sum. The timing means the entity protesters are now pressuring in Portland may no longer be the same legal entity that authorized the shipments.

In Portland, roughly fifty people demonstrated outside Sightline's office last week after learning of the shipments. Organizers with the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement are pushing city councilors to investigate whether Sightline receives any local resources, tax incentives, or city contracts, and to use whatever leverage the city has to disrupt the sales.

\"We really want our city councilors to help us follow up and look into what Sightline is doing,\" said Olivia Katbi, a BDS organizer in Portland. \"Are they producing these items here in our city? What is their relationship with Elbit Systems in Israel?\"

The question of what a city can actually do about a company's foreign arms supply chain is exactly what activists in Portland and across the country are testing. Last year, six members of Portland's city council took a symbolic pledge to investigate the manufacturing and transport of weapons for Israel's military within city limits. Two of them, Tiffany Koyama Lane and Angelita Morillo, said last week that the Sightline revelations are precisely what the pledge contemplated.

\"AI target recognition technologies might be built and tested abroad, but they always end up at our doorstep,\" Morillo said. \"The same class of tools implicated in human rights violations against civilians in Gaza and protesters can be turned on Portlanders.\"

What sharpened local anger was a detail that landed differently than a cargo manifest. Sightline's promotional videos, which the company has since revised, included footage of the aerial tram at Oregon Health and Science University, a public research hospital in Portland, edited alongside imagery of the company's target recognition interface. OHSU said it had no relationship with Sightline and did not authorize the filming. The city bureau that manages the tram also said it gave no permission. Sightline removed the clip after protests erupted.

\"It was intended to demonstrate how our software can enhance and process video, not to represent a specific deployment or partnership,\" Thomas said.

The pattern extends beyond Oregon. In December 2024, Alameda County in California became what appears to be the first county in the United States to divest from a corporation specifically because of its role in Israel's military activities, selling $32 million in Caterpillar bonds. Caterpillar sells bulldozers that human rights groups say have been used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure. The Alameda action was followed by an ethical investment policy adopted in 2025. In September 2024, Portland, Maine's city council unanimously passed a resolution directing the city manager to avoid investing public funds in more than eighty companies, from Lockheed Martin to Volvo, that supporters said were tied to Israeli military activities. The vote was seen at the time as a sign that divestment campaigns were migrating from university student governments to municipal governments.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that he was attentive to the broader issue of surveillance tools designed for overseas use returning to American soil. \"As a privacy hawk, I'm always concerned about the prospect of surveillance tools designed for use overseas, AI or otherwise, boomeranging back to violate Americans' constitutional privacy rights here at home,\" he said. Wyden has also consistently supported legislation to send arms to Israel and co-sponsored legislation to block boycotts of Israel. He was one of forty senators who changed course in April, voting to block the sale of military equipment to Israel.

Elbit Systems, the recipient of Sightline's shipments, is Israel's largest arms producer and the manufacturer of roughly 85 percent of the drones used by the Israeli military, according to reporting by Al Jazeera. The company reported $7.9 billion in revenue in 2025, up 16 percent from 2024, with a backlog exceeding $28 billion, Israel representing 28 percent of those orders. Bezhalel Machlis, Elbit's president and CEO, said on an investor call in March that the company expected to increase revenue by scaling up production to meet demand as the United States and Israel surge operations into Iran and Lebanon. \"As in the Middle East, as one conflict ends, another begins,\" he told investors.

For Sightline, the Portland protests represent a complication the company likely did not anticipate when it was building its marketing materials around local infrastructure. For the activists, the question is whether a city with no formal relationship to Sightline can still exert pressure, through procurement rules, contract standards, or simply the cost of reputational damage.

\"We are a step beyond just going to protest outside of a building,\" Katbi said. \"If the federal government won't stop their sale, the city should do everything in its power to disrupt the process.\"

Whether Portland has that power remains unresolved. The city has not confirmed any contracts, incentives, or investment relationships with Sightline. But the councilors' pledge and the OHSU incident give the activists a foothold, and a reason to keep asking.

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Sightline Intelligence and Acron Technologies did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Portland Mayor Keith Wilson declined to comment.