‘Free Palestine!': Microsoft employee interrupts Satya Nadella's speech at Seattle conference
A Microsoft employee allegedly disrupted the company's Build developer conference in Seattle, Washington, while protesting against the company's cloud and AI contracts with the Israeli government. Protesters interrupted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's speech on the stage, with one shouting 'Free Palestine!' While the protesters were escorted out of a hall inside the Seattle conference center, Nadella continued to speak, ignoring their attempt to interrupt.
A post shared by No Azure for Apartheid (@noazureforapartheid)
One of the protesters who interrupted Nadella was Microsoft employee Joe Lopez. He was joined by a fired Google employee who was involved in last year's sit-in protests against Google's cloud contract with Israel, The Verge reported.
For the past four years, Lopez has been working as a firmware engineer on the company's Azure hardware systems team. Shortly after interrupting Nadella, he wrote an email to thousands of Microsoft employees, expressing how 'shocked' he was 'by the silence of our leadership,' just days after Microsoft responded to employee protests by claiming there was no evidence to suggest that its Azure and AI tech has harmed people in Gaza.
'Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza,' Lopez wrote in his email. 'Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie. Every byte of data that is stored on the cloud (much of it likely containing data obtained by illegal mass surveillance) can and will be used as justification to level cities and exterminate Palestinians.'
After conducting an internal review, Microsoft said that its relationship with the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is 'structured as a standard commercial relationship,' and that it has 'found no evidence that Microsoft's Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.'
The protest was organized byNo Azure for Apartheid, a group of Microsoft employees speaking up against the company's contracts with the Israeli government. On its website, it says, 'Join the growing No Tech for Apartheid movement and demand that Microsoft live up to its own purported ethical values—by ending its direct and indirect complicity in Israeli apartheid and genocide. Join us, alongside students, teachers, activists, cultural workers, healthcare workers, and trade unions, alongside the International Court of Justice, alongside ordinary people in the streets and Palestinians worldwide, in building a new future where Palestine is free.'
The company's latest statement was criticised by Hossam Nasr, an organizer of No Azure for Apartheid and a former Microsoft employee. He was reportedly fired after he held a vigil outside Microsoft's headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.
'In one breath, they claim that their technology is not being used to harm people in Gaza, while also admitting they don't have insight into how their technologies are being used,' said Nasr. 'It's very clear that their intention with this statement is not to actually address their worker concerns, but rather to make a PR stunt to whitewash their image that has been tarnished by their relationship with the Israeli military.'
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