15 min read
On April 4, Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Amidst the revelry and celebration of its products, including AI, they were disrupted by two employees representing an organisation called No Azure For Apartheid, dedicated to revealing the truth behind that very same AI’s use in Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Their disruptions made waves globally, and The New Arab caught up with the founders of the employee movement, Hossam Nasr and Abdo Mohamed, as well as one of the disruptors, Vaniya Agrawal.
AI-powered genocide
Recent reports have described the ongoing horrors in Gaza as “the first AI-powered genocide,” revealing how Israel has been able to enact such catastrophic damage in such a short amount of time.
Both +972 Magazine and the Intercept describe how the Israeli military utilises AI and cloud-computing software from Amazon and Google to create programmes like “Lavender,” and “Where’s Daddy” — programmes that, in the early stages of the genocide, labelled a staggering 37,000 Palestinian civilians as suspected militants, tracking them so they can be targeted when they arrive at their home.
But it’s not just Amazon and Google that have provided Israel with the tools and infrastructure to make these human rights violations possible; it’s also Microsoft, more specifically, their cloud computing and AI software, Azure.
The Israeli military’s reliance on philanthropist Bill Gates’ Microsoft is so heavy that it’s used in all its major military sectors.
Leaked documents seen by +972 and DropSite News reveal that Azure is used by units in the air, ground and naval forces. Not only that, but it’s what the army uses to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, with a programme called “Rolling Stone.”
Most importantly, the relationship between Israel and Microsoft doesn't end simply at the purchase of an Azure contract. Some of these services are used in highly classified units, including one inside the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, which requires Microsoft employees with security clearances to sign off and oversee the provision of these services. It isn’t just a vendor-customer dynamic that allows this genocide to be so brutal, but an intimate and entwined relationship that requires constant participation by both parties.
This kind of business goes directly against Microsoft’s global human rights statement: “Technology should be used for the good of humanity, to empower and protect everyone and to leave no one behind.”
It’s for this reason that Microsoft employees began to take a stand against their work being used for such atrocities and started an organisation called No Azure for Apartheid in late 2023.
Early organisers in the movement include Hossam Nasr and Abdo Mohamed, who were both fired from Microsoft in November of last year, after holding a vigil for Palestinians on company grounds.
This comes after both of them spent months trying to get executives’ attention on their concern about their complicity in war crimes, through internal petitions as well as through the employee resource group Palestinians and Allies at Microsoft (PAAM).
Months later, they are joined by Vaniya Agrawal and Ibtihal Aboussad, who were the ones to disrupt executives at the 50th celebration on April 4.
Ibtihal's interruption of Microsoft AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman's talk, went viral globally as she tossed a keffiyeh on stage and explicitly called out his complicity in allowing Microsoft products to be used in human rights violations.
Two hours later, Vaniya would disrupt a panel discussion featuring Gates, current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
We sat down with Hossam, Abdo and Vaniya to get more insight on No Azure For Apartheid, Microsoft’s complicity, and the role of big tech in war:
The New Arab: When did No Azure for Apartheid start, and how did you first begin trying to get attention to Microsoft's complicity?
Hossam Nasr: It started when a group of Microsoft employees, including myself and a handful of others, were fed up with Microsoft not responding to our internal protests at the company's complete lack of recognition of the Palestinian people as human beings.
So there became a recognition that, one, there needs to be a focus on Microsoft's actual business practices as they affect Palestinians in Palestine and as they directly contribute to the genocide and the horrible scenes that we were seeing coming out of Gaza.
And two, the need for a strategy to put pressure on executives rather than trying to appeal to the humanity and moral character of these executives.
We started researching Microsoft's complicity in the genocide, trying to find out exactly the target and strategy for this campaign.
We then formally launched No Azure for Apartheid in May 2024, with four main demands: IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) off Azure, ending all sales of any Azure cloud and AI services to the Israeli military and government.
Two, disclose all the ties between Microsoft and the Israeli military-industrial complex, the Israeli government and the Israeli military.
Three, calling for a permanent and immediate ceasefire to honour an earlier petition signed by over 1,000 employees.
And lastly, to protect employees and uphold free speech by ending the discrimination and the double standards against Arab, Muslim, Palestinian and allied employees.
What was the corporate response once NOAA began? Was there any?
Abdo Mohamed: Microsoft took two approaches; whenever we brought up the concerns, all they did was ignore or decline to comment. [They] cancelled our questions when we asked them at AMAs (Ask Me Anything event), and at the same time, whenever we tried to publicise Microsoft's complicity, we were faced with suppression, intimidation, and retaliation.
From the get-go, with the launch of the campaign, we hosted an internal petition and internal links to direct that petition. And on that same day, someone raised a ticket under the severity one category, which means it's supposed to be something impacting multi-region. [Using] that severity is against Microsoft guidelines, but they took down the links going into our petition, and after that, they completely shut down the internal website and the internal position.
When we tried to raise the concerns in AMAs — where we can talk to the decision makers at Microsoft — those questions were ignored, despite being voted [by peers] as the highest importance. Or when we asked questions in a specific internal platform called Senior Leadership Connection, designated for people and workers to ask your CEO, your CTO, like Satya Nadella or, you know, Brad Smith, these types of questions, these threads would end up being closed for no other reason except it was calling out Microsoft’s complicity.
And the other angle is complete suppression, complete repression using methods like an HR investigation, or other methods like weaponising policies. Changing policies to suppress more and more of what we were bringing up, as No Azure for Apartheid.
Hossam Nasr: I want to add, about this severity, is when they cited this policy, [like] the business use of short links [internally], we called out that this exact same policy says that you're supposed to ask the owners of the link before you take it down. They responded by saying, “Oh, yeah, good point. We've actually amended the policy to make it so that that's not a requirement anymore.”
So that's just a perfect example of what [Abdo] was talking about. They either weaponise the existing policies and selectively apply them, or, in some cases, if it doesn't suit them, they just completely invent new policies in order to suppress our movement.
Getting the word out with that kind of suppression can be really difficult. How many of your old coworkers do you actually think know about the extent of Microsoft's complicity?
Abdo Mohamed: Through the sustained work that the campaign has been doing, including using social media to discuss Microsoft complicity, using internal platforms (despite the repression) to ask questions, and bring forward the conversation, the mass resignation emails that we have seen, actions like the Microsoft employee town hall, where in front of Satya [Nadella] people wore shirts that said, “Does our code kill kids, Satya”, and lastly, the actions disrupting the Microsoft 50th anniversary event, there is no excuse. Now, there is no reason for people at Microsoft or workers at Microsoft not to know the complicity we've been calling out and the campaign that we have been working on.
You were both eventually fired, ultimately for hosting a vigil without approval. How did you feel knowing that, after all of the work you did to get awareness on the issue, the vigil was the thing that broke the camel's back?
Hossam Nasr: I had spent the entire previous year doing whatever I could to raise my voice internally or externally: Speaking to the press, talking on social media about Microsoft's complicity and the need to end Microsoft's relationship with the Israeli military. It was clear that it was getting under Microsoft's skin and that Microsoft was trying to get rid of me.
They started with intimidation, silencing, and investigations, but that didn't work. They moved on to actual punishments and sanctions, including financial punishments, including zero rewards, zero salary increase, zero bonus, being prevented from even talking, posting or commenting on internal social media platforms and having to do 13 trainings in two weeks; I got all the punishments they could levy against me, short of termination, and even that didn't work.
I didn't expect the vigil to be the thing to do it. It was never intended to be disruptive or escalatory. If anything, it was intended to be the least confrontational, the least escalatory option, to honour and remember the one-year mark of the genocide, to remember why we started the campaign, to remember the countless lives that were lost throughout an entire year of genocide, now past its 18th month.
But at the same time, I was always prepared, and always knew that it was on the table. And to me, that was one of the cheapest prices one could pay to do the bare minimum to stop this genocide.
The BDS campaign has recently added Microsoft as a priority target, asking people to boycott, specifically Xbox products. Can you explain why this is so crucial and how people who regularly use these products can help?
Hossam Nasr: Ultimately, our campaign is only going to be successful if we make it so that complicity in genocide and partnership in genocide are more costly than profitable goods.
At the end of the day, Microsoft is a profit-seeking business, and at this point, it is effectively a weapons manufacturer that is profiting off the death of the Palestinians. They are only able to do this because, in this day and age, we have assigned so little value to Palestinian life that genocide and participation in genocide have become a profitable business.
The way to do this is through a partnership between worker organising movements like ours and mass engagement with the public to exact the highest possible price on these company executives, for them to really get the message. That’s why mass engagement with our movement, through targeted boycotts and the BDS movement, is super crucial.
The focus is specifically on Microsoft Gaming because the gaming business is one of its most profitable businesses, and it's also an easy and low-barrier target for the boycott. That includes Xbox, Xbox devices, and Xbox peripherals and includes games like Candy Crush, Call of Duty, and Minecraft, and all the other games owned by Microsoft subsidiaries like Bethesda, Activision, and King.
It also includes cancelling your Xbox Game Pass subscription, which is a really easy way of participating in this important boycott call.
The second priority is Microsoft devices, Surface laptops, headsets, mice, and any other kind of devices that are sold by Microsoft. And lastly is Microsoft Co-Pilot, Microsoft's new AI product that it's investing millions, if not billions of dollars, into. That same AI technology is being sold to the Israeli military to accelerate and exacerbate the genocide against Palestinians.
So, a very easy thing to do is to downgrade your Microsoft 365 subscription, to not include co-pilot, do not use co-pilot, do not pay for co-pilot and find other alternatives. That is our call to anybody who cares about our movement is to participate in this targeted boycott against Microsoft to ensure that, never again, will an AI-powered genocide be profitable.
Vaniya, walk us through the experience of disrupting the executives during Microsoft's 50th celebration. What was the atmosphere like? How did it feel watching them go on about AI before you eventually interrupted?
Vaniya Agrawal: Showing up to the 50th anniversary event was a scary experience. I think it was frustrating to see everybody celebrating this legacy of Microsoft over the past five decades. But their legacy has been built on blood, genocide, apartheid, surveillance, targeting and bombing. It's so clear that so many people just don't know that.
It felt like a massive cognitive dissonance for me, knowing what I was standing for and being there to protest, and then seeing, you know, Steve Ballmer get up on stage and start chanting, "50 more years, 50 more years." I felt so sad in that moment. I was just like, how can we be cheering on for 50 more years of arming a genocide, of killing children, of mass murdering, of enabling mass human rights violations?
I started to feel, honestly, pretty angry. Angry at the CEOS and the leadership at Microsoft for being complicit and constantly prioritising profits over people. I was mad for the employees at Microsoft who had spoken up previously and were silenced and ignored, and fired.
Most of all, I was angry for Palestine, for Gaza, for the people who have been martyred, the people who have been displaced, the people who have lost their families, their homes, and continue to fight through it all.
I sort of used that anger to fuel myself and get through the fear, the anxiety, and the stress of taking such a loud and strong stand on such a big stage in front of such powerful people. I'm not going to lie, I hesitated. I went to stand up initially when I saw the three CEOS on stage, and I hesitated for a moment, like, am I really doing this? And it was a nerve-wracking moment, but I stayed grounded in Gaza, and the message and what we were trying to say to everybody carried me through all of that.
When Ibtihal went before you, Mustafa kept saying, “I hear your protest, thank you.” What is it like hearing that, but knowing that Microsoft's stance on aiding Israel hasn't changed?
Vaniya Agrawal: Again, frustrating. We've seen employees at Microsoft constantly speaking up, posting in AMAs, posting comments to executives and leadership asking for answers on Microsoft's ties to the Israeli military, and these comments and questions get deleted and ignored.
We saw our own members get escorted out of a peaceful and silent protest at a Microsoft Town Hall. And we have just consistently, time after time, seen Microsoft either ignore us or give us empty answers and empty words with no action, no follow-up, no answers, and this felt like more of that.
It felt like almost equivalent to thoughts and prayers, like you're just giving me empty words without any action, it doesn't mean anything to me when I'm seeing you still be complicit, still continue to have these relationships, still keep these contracts with the hundreds of Israeli units and bases that you are arming and aiding. And honestly, I almost felt like Mustafa's response, he might as well have responded to Ibtihal just the same way that Bill Gates and Satya and Steve Ballmer responded to me.
Like they didn't look at me, they didn't acknowledge me, they ignored me, and they moved on as if nothing had happened. And I feel like Mustafa's response to Ibtihal’s protest was similar, in that it did nothing. He didn't take any action, he didn't put out any comment, he didn't change anything, so what does it mean for you to hear my protest? What does it mean for you to thank me for my protest at that point?
Is there anything you want to say to tech workers who don't like what these companies are doing but don't feel like they have the power to do anything about it?
Vaniya Agrawal: I would say, I totally hear you and I understand where you're coming from. It's a scary time to be standing up, and I recognise that I have privilege and power in my position, in being able to take such a loud stance.
But I also want to say that resistance lies in the power of the collective, and it's not a solitary endeavour. With grassroots movements like ours, there are so many different opportunities to help out that take on different levels of risk. It's possible to help these campaigns without putting yourself in the line of fire. And, you know, even something small like bringing food for mutual aid at a rally is a form of resistance.
So I would say, organise, build a community and sign petitions, and do what you can without putting yourself at risk. But if you can take more of a risk, demand that your workplaces divest from Israel. Let your employers know that you refuse to have your labour power apartheid and genocide, and don't give a single dollar more to these companies that aren't being held accountable to their own missions and values.
And what do you think accountability looks like for these companies?
Vaniya Agrawal: I think accountability for these companies looks like them living up to the missions and the values that they purport to hold themselves to.
For instance, with Microsoft, you know they claim that they are empowering every person and every organisation around the world to achieve more, but how can you be claiming that when you are aiding in the murder and bombing of tens of thousands of people? Who are you empowering? You're only empowering an oppressor, you're empowering a military force, you're not empowering the people.
I think accountability looks like them having to answer all of these workers' calls for information on what their ties are to the US military-industrial complex, and having to disclose exactly where they get their money from, and exactly where all of their workers' labour is going.
It also looks like divesting from the military-industrial complex, and calling for a permanent and immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as well as protecting their employees and their right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. That's something that Microsoft especially has not been doing when it comes to employees who have been retaliated against and even fired for standing up for what they believe in.
So I think accountability for them means being clear about who you are: A weapons manufacturer. And let people consent to giving their labour to you, and whatever military force you're arming, or stay true to the values that you claim to hold, disclose all your ties, divest from the military, and protect all of your employees who try to speak out against this.
Tariq Raouf is a Palestinian-American Muslim writer, based in Seattle
Follow them on Instagram: @tariq_raouf
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