‘Free Palestine': Microsoft employee protests during Satya Nadella's keynote speech, video goes viral
A Microsoft engineer disrupted CEO Satya Nadella's keynote address during the company's Build developer conference in Seattle. Joe Lopez, a firmware engineer, who has worked on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform for four years, interrupted the speech with a protest against the company's ties to Israel.
As Nadella spoke on stage, Lopez climbed onto his chair and shouted, 'Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians? How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?' His protest was quickly cut short as security personnel escorted him out of the event.
Before being removed, Lopez was joined by a former Google employee who stood up and shouted, 'Free Palestine, I'm a former Google worker and all tech workers…' She was stopped by security personnel by then.
Watch here:
A post shared by No Azure for Apartheid (@noazureforapartheid)
Following the protest, Lopez sent an email explaining his protest, citing his deep concern over Microsoft's involvement in Israeli military operations through its cloud services, The Verge reported. 'Like many of you, I have been watching the ongoing genocide in Gaza in horror. 'I have been shocked by the silence, inaction, and callousness of world leaders as Palestinian people are suffering, losing their lives and their homes while they plead for the rest of the world to pay attention and act,' Lopez wrote.
He also wrote, 'Microsoft continues to facilitate Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,' and said he could no longer remain silent.
Lopez also referenced a recent incident in April when two Microsoft employees, Ibtihal and Vaniya, were fired after disrupting the company's 50th anniversary celebration with a similar pro-Palestine message. 'I saw Ibtihal and Vaniya's disruption of Microsoft's 50th anniversary on April 4 and was shocked to hear the words coming from their mouths. Microsoft is killing kids? Is my work killing kids?' he wrote in the mail.
Lopez's protest came after Microsoft published a blog post just a few days earlier. In the blog, the company stated it had carried out an 'internal review' into the issue with assistance from an independent third-party firm. According to the post, their investigation found 'no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.'
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