LONDON: A keynote address by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was interrupted by an employee protesting the company’s relationship with Israel on Monday.
Joe Lopez, a firmware engineer who works on Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform Azure, shouted “Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians” during the company’s annual developer conference.
Before he was escorted from the room, he added: “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”
It was not the only protest against Microsoft’s relationship with Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
A group called No Azure for Apartheid, which has been campaigning for over a year, also demonstrated at the conference.
Azure is believed to have been used by Israel in surveillance of Palestinians and is utilized by the Ofek Unit, a branch of the air force that identifies airstrike targets, The Guardian reported.
Lopez emailed colleagues to explain his actions. “As one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing: demand an end to this senseless tragedy, or we will cease our technological support for Israel,” he said.
“If leadership continues to ignore this demand, I promise that it won’t go unnoticed. The world has already woken up to our complicity and is turning against us. The boycotts will increase and our image will continue to spiral into disrepair.”
Lopez added: “Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza. Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie.”
He concluded: “We don’t need an internal audit to know that a top Azure customer is committing crimes against humanity. We see it live on the internet every day.”
Anna Hattle, a Microsoft employee and organizer of the No Azure for Apartheid campaign, emailed senior management on May 15 stating: “One year ago, workers launched the No Azure for Apartheid campaign and petition in a state of urgency after 7 months of genocide.”
Referencing the 1948 mass displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians known as the Nakba, Hattle said the world is “currently witnessing the same crimes committed 77 years ago with one key difference: now, the Israeli Occupation Forces are carrying out this genocide at a much greater scale thanks to Microsoft cloud and AI technology.”
On April 6, employees Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal accused Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman of profiting from war at an artificial intelligence event. Aboussad and Agrawal were subsequently dismissed by the company.
Google also fired 50 people last year after a series of internal protests against its own cloud-computing relationship with the Israeli military.
Microsoft refused to comment on Lopez’s protest. An earlier investigation by the company concluded that there was “no evidence” Israel uses its technology to harm or target people.
