Five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with the company’s chief executive for protesting contracts to provide artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military.
The protest on Monday came after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed last week that sophisticated AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was speaking about new products at an employee town hall meeting at the company’s corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. Workers standing about 15 feet to his right then revealed T-shirts that when they stood side-by-side spelled out the question “Does Our Code Kill Kids, Satya?”
Photos and video of the incident, which was live streamed throughout the company, shows Nadella kept speaking and did not acknowledge the protesters. Two men quickly tapped the workers on the shoulders and ushered them out of the room.
Microsoft did not respond to an email from the AP on Tuesday seeking comment about the protest or whether the employees involved would face disciplinary action. The company also previously declined to comment about the AP’s 18 February story about its contracts with the Israeli military.
In October, Microsoft fired two workers for helping organise an unauthorised lunchtime vigil for Palestinian refugees at its headquarters. Microsoft said at the time that it ended the employment of some people “in accordance with internal policy” but declined to give details.
A group of workers has been raising concerns within the company for months about Microsoft providing services to the Israeli military through its Azure cloud computing platform. Some employees at the company have also spoken out in support of Israel and said those supporting Palestinians have made them feel unsafe.
The AP’s investigation included exclusive details drawn from internal company data and documents, including that the usage of AI models by the Israeli military through Azure increased nearly 200 times after the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas militants.
The AP’s report was shared and discussed among Microsoft employees on social media and within the company’s internal systems. In a community forum designated for employees to raise concerns with senior leadership, an employee shared links to the AP report. More than a dozen others questioned whether the company was violating its stated principles to defend human rights and not to let its AI models be used to harm people, according to screenshots reviewed by the AP.
Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist who was one of the Microsoft workers fired over the October vigil, said the company is prioritising profits over its own human rights commitments.
“The demands are clear,” said Mohamed, who works with a group of Microsoft workers called No Azure for Apartheid. “Satya Nadella and Microsoft executives need to answer to their workers by dropping contracts with the Israeli military.”
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 61,000 Palestinians when including the thousands thought to be trapped under the extensive rubble of the enclave. The conduct of the Israeli military in the enclave has resulted in a genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa in the International Court of Justice, with the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges.
