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Microsoft Fires 2 Employees Over Gaza Vigil
"Microsoft are facilitating a genocide, and punishing those who stand for humanity," one anti-war group said.
Oct 26, 2024
This piece was updated on Sunday, October 27 to include a statement from Council on American-Islamic Relations and its Washington state chapter.
Microsoft fired two of its employees hours after they held a vigil outside the tech giant's Redmond, Washington campus in honor of the Palestinians who have been killed in Israel's year-long assault on Gaza.
The vigil was "unauthorized," according to reporting from The Associated Press, but the employees said that their event—held during lunch on Thursday—was similar to other events Microsoft had approved to raise money for charity.
"We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones," one of the workers who was fired, Abdo Mohamed, told the AP. "But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves."
"Our work is currently being used by the Israeli state to wreak unfathomable destruction on Palestinian life."
The Israeli assault on Gaza, which many experts consider to be a genocide, has claimed nearly 43,000 lives according to official figures, though the real number may be much higher.
Mohamed, who was born in Egypt, had a work visa for his job at Microsoft as a researcher and data scientist. He said he would need to find a new job within two months in order to maintain his visa and stay in the United States.
The other employee, Hossam Nasr, who grew up in Egypt, also helps to organize Harvard Alumni for Palestine.
Nasr said he had previously been investigated and punished by Microsoft for pro-Palestinian posts he had made on the company's internal social media platform.
Microsoft confirmed to the AP on Friday that it "ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy."
Both Mohamed and Nasr are members of a group called No Azure for Apartheid, which grew out of the wider No Tech for Apartheid campaign and opposes the use of Microsoft technologies such as its cloud computing program Azure to aid Israel's war on Gaza and the maintenance of its occupation in the West Bank.
Microsoft has a longstanding relationship with Israel, as No Azure for Apartheid detailed in May. While Amazon and Google won the bid to provide exclusive cloud computing to the Israeli government and military through Project Nimbus, departments continue to use Azure in the transition. In addition, Azure provides support for Israeli military company Elbit systems' new military simulation software. Microsoft also offers consulting services to the Israeli Prison Service.
"Our work is currently being used by the Israeli state to wreak unfathomable destruction on Palestinian life," No Azure for Apartheid wrote. "As producers of powerful technologies that are frequently misused to serve the interests of unethical government entities, we bear the unique responsibility of ensuring that our code is used for good."
Anti-war and Palestinian solidarity organizations and activists spoke out against the firings.
"Microsoft are facilitating a genocide, and punishing those who stand for humanity," CODEPINK wrote on social media on Saturday.
International Solidarity Movement co-founder Huwaida Arraf said: "Not only does Microsoft provide technology to enable genocide and apartheid, but it also fires employees for holding vigils to honor murdered family members."
University of Chicago professor and In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi linked the firings to several instances of retaliation for Palestinian solidarity activism at universities and companies.
"Harvard Library suspending faculty for a silent study-in. Microsoft firing workers for a Gaza vigil. U Chicago evicting a student for protesting. Universal canceling a TV show production because the author is anti-genocide... all within the last week," Abdelhadi pointed out on social media.
Microsoft's actions also come six months after Google fired 28 employees for staging protests against Project Nimbus.
On Sunday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Washington state chapter called on Microsoft to reinstate the employees.
"This is yet another illustration of how employees of conscience, who are standing up for the human rights issue of our time, are being silenced in the corporate world," said CAIR-WA executive director Imraan Siddiqi in a statement.
CAIR National executive director Nihad Awad agreed: "Time after time, we see the 'except for Palestine' rule applied whenever anyone dares to defend the human rights, humanity, and dignity of the Palestinian people. In any other context, a corporation would celebrate its employees standing up for human rights and against genocide–'except for Palestine.'"
"This hypocritical double standard must end," Awad urged. "Microsoft must rehire these principled employees and apologize for its biased actions that appear to support Israel's genocide and to deny Palestinian humanity."
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'Hellscape': Microsoft Deal Would Reopen Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Power AI
"This is another chapter in a nightmare that won't end," a campaigner said.
Sep 20, 2024
The corporation that owns the shuttered nuclear plant on Three Mile Island on Friday announced a deal with Microsoft to reopen the facility to provide power to the tech company for data centers using artificial intelligence.
Three Mile Island is well-known as the site of largest nuclear disaster in U.S. history—a reactor there, Unit 2, partially melted down in 1979. However, the site's other reactor, Unit 1, continued to operate safely until 2019, when it was closed for economic reasons.
With the help of tax breaks from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), plant owner Constellation Energy plans to spend $1.6 billion to restart Unit 1, with all of the power going to Microsoft for the first 20 years. Microsoft and other tech firms use inordinate amounts of energy to power data centers used for AI and have advocated for nuclear as a zero-emissions power source.
Though it doesn't emit carbon, nuclear power's downsides make it the subject of fierce opposition from many environmental and public safety groups.
Friday's deal, combining nuclear power and AI, which also poses great safety risks, was too much for The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, who quipped that "the hellscape of modern life" had been captured in one headline.
Local campaigners vowed to push against the reopening and keep the area free of nuclear activity.
"We will challenge this proposal at every venue that is available for us," Eric Epstein, a former chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, a campaign group, told the Inquirer.
"This is another chapter in a nightmare that won't end," he added.
Siri, define the hellscape of modern life in one headline https://t.co/miQMSWROmp
— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) September 20, 2024
Three Mile Island would be the first decommissioned U.S. nuclear plant to reopen, and the first to provide all of its power to one corporation, according toThe New York Times. Microsoft and Constellation didn't disclose the financial details of the deal.
About 19% of electricity in the U.S. comes from nuclear power, and a drive for "clean energy," as well as the IRA credits, have spurred growth in the sector. Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates is a vocal proponent and has started his own nuclear company, TerraPower, which is building a plant in Wyoming.
The Three Mile Island project, expected to get the plant back online in 2028, still needs regulatory approval at multiple levels. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has already come out in support of the plan.
A study commissioned by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council, which represents more than 115 local unions, found that reopening the plant would create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, including 600 at the plant itself, which is in the middle of the Susquehanna River, just south of Harrisburg, the state capital. The plant's reopening is seen by some community leaders as the revival of an "economic anchor in a region beset with financial hardship," according toThe Washington Post.
Pennsylvania has five active nuclear plants, including two owned by Constellation, whose stock price shot up on Friday morning after the Three Mile Island announcement was made. The company and other industry backers celebrated the symbolic victory of restarting the plant.
"If anything says nuclear power is here to stay and expand, it's Three Mile Island reopening!" Amir Adnani, CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, wrote on social media.
Epstein, the campaigner, said the focus should be finishing the cleanup from the 1979 disaster. About 99% of the Unit 2's fuel has been removed to Idaho, but the last 1% has proven difficult to deal with.
"First things first, remove the waste from the island, and clean up [Unit 2]," Epstein said.
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Investigation Exposes Big Tech Ties to Israeli Genocide in Gaza
"It's more than complicity: It's direct participation and collaboration with the Israeli military on the tools they're using to kill Palestinians," said one policy expert.
Aug 05, 2024
The Israeli military is using cloud storage and artificial intelligence services provided by U.S. tech titans for "direct participation and collaboration" in what many critics around the world call Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, according to an investigation published this week.
Two Israeli publications—+972 Magazine and Local Call—on Sunday published a joint investigation revealing that the Israeli military is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to store data gleaned from the mass surveillance in Gaza, where nearly 10 months of bombings and ground invasion have left more than 140,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to local and international estimates.
Multiple sources told the outlets that pressure on the IDF since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel has "led to a dramatic increase in the purchase of services from Google Cloud, Amazon's AWS, and Microsoft Azure." The report states that cooperation between the IDF and AWS "is particularly close" and "even helped on rare occasions to confirm aerial assassination strikes in Gaza—strikes that would have also killed and harmed Palestinian civilians."
IDF Col. Racheli Dembinsky—who spoke at a recent "IT for IDF" event near Tel Aviv—told investigative journalist Yuval Abraham that the "most important" advantage offered by cloud computing companies is advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. AI, she said, provides the IDF with "very significant operational effectiveness" as it obliterates Gaza.
Last year, Abraham published an investigation on the same two websites that showed how the IDF is using AI to select targets, essentially creating what one former Israeli officer called a "mass assassination factory." In April, the journalist revealed that the IDF was using a previously undisclosed AI system that had replaced "human agency and precision" with "mass target creation and lethality."
According to Abraham:
Many of Israel's attacks in Gaza at the beginning of the war were based on the recommendations of a program called "Lavender." With the help of AI, this system processed information on most Gaza residents and compiled a list of suspected military operatives, including junior ones, for assassination. Israel systematically attacked these operatives in their private homes, killing entire families. Over time, the military realized that Lavender was not "reliable" enough, and its use decreased in favor of other software. +972 and Local Call could not confirm whether Lavender was developed with the help of civilian firms, including public cloud companies.
In 2021, Israel signed a $1.2 billion contract with Amazon and Google for Project Nimbus, which provides cloud services to the Israeli government and military. The move sparked the #NoTechForApartheid campaign, in which disaffected tech workers and dozens of advocacy groups rose up against Big Tech's complicity in Israeli human rights crimes in Palestine.
"Technology should be used to bring people together, not enable apartheid and ethnic cleansing," the campaign explained in 2021.
Earlier this year, Google—which Abraham said was briefly listed as a sponsor of the "IT for IDF" event—fired 50 employees for protesting Project Nimbus.
IDF Col. Avi Dadon told Abraham that "of course" tech companies want to work with the IDF, because "it's the strongest marketing."
"What the IDF uses was and will be one of the best selling points of products and services in the world," Dadon explained.
However, Big Tech's alleged complicity in Israeli human rights violations is coming under more intense scrutiny lately as Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan has also applied for arrest warrants for two Hamas leaders, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri and Ismael Haniyah—at least one of whom has since been killed.
Last month, the ICJ ruled in a separate case that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must immediately end.
Some campaigners have noted that Google is apparently violating its own AI principles, which vow that the company "will not design or deploy AI in… technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm… weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people… technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms… [or] technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."
Others have noted Google and Amazon's lack of transparency on how its systems are being used.
"Neither company has publicly disclosed what, if any, human rights due diligence they carried out before participating in Project Nimbus," Zach Campbell, a digital rights expert at Human Rights Watch, told Abraham. "They haven't mentioned which, if any, red lines there are in terms of what would be permissible use of their technology."
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, U.S. policy fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Abraham that while "there's always a lot of focus on the direct military assistance the United States provides to Israel—the munitions, fighter jets, and bombs," far less attention "has been paid to these partnerships that span both civilian and military environments."
"It's more than complicity: It's direct participation and collaboration with the Israeli military on the tools they're using to kill Palestinians," he stressed.
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