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India Today
27-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Microsoft fires employee who interrupted CEO Satya Nadella at Build to protest company's Israel business
Microsoft has fired the employee who disrupted CEO Satya Nadella's speech during the Microsoft Build 2025 event last week. The employee, Joe Lopez, who was a firmware engineer in Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI), had interrupted Nadella's speech saying: 'Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?' 'How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?' He was escorted out of the event immediately after this. advertisementLopez's pro-Palestine protest at the event was followed by a number of other disruptions at the Build 2025 event. According to a report by the Associated Press, at least three addresses during the event were disrupted by pro-Palestine protests. Reportedly, protesters also gathered outside the Build 2025 venue in Seattle. Soon after being escorted out of the event, Lopez also sent out a mass email to his colleagues explaining why he interrupted the event and disputing Microsoft's claims of how Azure is being used in Gaza. He says that as one of the 'largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing'. He wrote that the company has the power to 'demand an end to this senseless tragedy'. 'I can no longer stand by in silence as Microsoft continues to facilitate Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,' Lopez wrote. advertisement'Microsoft openly admitted to allowing the Israel Ministry of Defence 'special access to our technologies beyond the terms of our commercial agreements'. Do you really believe that this 'special access' was allowed only once? What sort of 'special access' do they really need? And what are they doing with it,' Lopez added in the the email, Lopez also addressed Microsoft's recent blog post where the company claims that it conducted an internal audit which 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'.Lopez said that Microsoft's statement 'falls far short of what we are demanding. Non-transparent audits into our cloud operations in Israel (conducted by no other than Microsoft itself and an unnamed external entity) that declare no wrongdoing by the company do not give me any sense of relief. In fact, this response has further compelled me to speak out'. '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,' his email disruption questioning Microsoft's work with Israel military wasn't the first instance that a company's employee has done a public protest. In April, Indian-origin Vaniya Agrawal interrupted Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates at the company's 50th anniversary celebration over the company's alleged involvement in Israel's war on Gaza. 'It is undeniable that Microsoft's Azure cloud offerings and AI developments form the technological backbone of Israel's automated apartheid and genocide systems,' she wrote in a a day before Agrawal's protest, another Microsoft engineer, Ibtihal Aboussad, had disrupted Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's speech at the Microsoft AI event saying, 'Mustafa, shame on you'.Both of them were fired. Last week, Microsoft reportedly quietly started filtering internal emails that contain words like 'Palestine,' 'Gaza,' and 'genocide,' to prevent any conversation around these topics being circulated on the company's Exchange servers.
India Today
20-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Microsoft engineer interrupts CEO Satya Nadella's keynote speech, says Microsoft is killing Palestinians
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's keynote speech at the Microsoft Build event on Monday was interrupted by an employee who accused the company of 'killing Palestinians'. The employee, who has been identified as Joe Lopez, is a firmware engineer under Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI) and has been with the company for the past four years. During Nadella's speech, Lopez yelled, 'Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?' 'How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?' he added. Lopez was escorted out of the event immediately the Microsoft employee did not stop at that. Soon after, he sent an internal email where he wrote about why he decided to disrupt the event with a pro-Palestinian protest. 'I can no longer stand by in silence as Microsoft continues to facilitate Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,' Lopez wrote in his email that has been published on protest comes just days after Microsoft published a blog post where it says that it conducted an internal review, along with support from a third-party firm, and that, according to its research, there was 'no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza'. Lopez also addresses this blog post in his email. He says 'their [Microsoft's] statement falls far short of what we are demanding. Non-transparent audits into our cloud operations in Israel (conducted by no other than Microsoft itself and an unnamed external entity) that declare no wrongdoing by the company do not give me any sense of relief. In fact, this response has further compelled me to speak out'.advertisement'Microsoft openly admitted to allowing the Israel Ministry of Defense 'special access to our technologies beyond the terms of our commercial agreements'. Do you really believe that this 'special access' was allowed only once? What sort 'special access' do they really need? And what are they doing with it,' he adds.'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,' his email further says that 'as one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing'. He says that the company has the power to 'demand an end to this senseless tragedy'.Lopez warns: 'The boycotts will increase and our [Microsoft's] image will continue to spiral into disrepair.'This isn't the first pro-Palestine protest heard from inside the company. Just last month, Indian-origin Vaniya Agrawal confronted Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates at the company's 50th anniversary celebration over the company's alleged involvement in Israel's war on Gaza. 'It is undeniable that Microsoft's Azure cloud offerings and AI developments form the technological backbone of Israel's automated apartheid and genocide systems,' she wrote in a a day before Agrawal's protest, another Microsoft engineer, Ibtihal Aboussad, had disrupted the Microsoft AI event during the company's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's speech saying, 'Mustafa, shame on you'.
