‘Free Palestine’ Protester Interrupts Satya Nadella During Microsoft’s Build Conference
Shortly after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stage at the company’s annual Microsoft Build developer’s conference, an employee interrupted the speech by shouting “Free Palestine” and demanding accountability from the CEO for the company’s work with the Israeli government.
“How about you show ’em how Microsoft is killing Palestinians? How about you show ’em how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?” the employee yelled from the audience before being confronted and dragged away by security. “As a Microsoft worker, I refuse to be complicit in this genocide,” he said as he was escorted from the room.
The employee is Joe Lopez, a four-year veteran of Microsoft’s Azure hardware systems team, according to The Verge. Shortly after his in-person protest, Lopez sent an email to thousands of Microsoft employees, The Verge reported, condemning the company’s leadership for continuing to work with the Israeli government despite its ongoing attacks that have killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
“Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza,” Lopez wrote, per The Verge. “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.”
The message refers to Microsoft’s recent statement that, after an internal review, it found no evidence that the Israeli military has used Azure or the company’s AI technology to target or harm Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That statement was issued after several other recent disruptions from anti-genocide protesters. At one event, a Microsoft employee stood up and called Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman a “war profiteer.” At another event, an employee disrupted an on-stage conversation between Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates, demanding the company “cut ties with Israel.”
No Azure for Apartheid appears to have organized all of the disruptions, including the one today at Build. The group is made up of current Microsoft employees who want the company to terminate all contracts with the Israeli military and government. The group has a series of ongoing planned actions to display their objection to the company’s continued business with the country that has been found by multiple human rights organizations to be committing a genocide.
Despite Microsoft’s claims that its technology has not been used in Israel’s destructive and deadly attacks on Gaza, an investigation conducted by Israeli publication +972 Magazine found Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of its AI and cloud services to Israel have increased since Israel started its onslaught in Gaza. A report from the Associated Press further confirmed that Israel has used AI models, including those from Microsoft, in warfare.
gizmodo
