Microsoft exposed for enabling “AI-powered genocide” in Gaza
On April 4th, celebrations of Microsoft’s 50th anniversary were disrupted by two employees representing a grassroots campaign called No Azure for Apartheid, according to The New Arab. The organization is dedicated to revealing Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which recent reports have described as “the first AI-powered genocide.”
The campaign was launched in May 2024, when a group of Microsoft employees, reportedly “fed up” with appealing to executives’ “humanity and moral character” formed a pressure group to protest the use of Azure’s cloud and AI services by the Israeli military. Leaked documents confirm Azure’s deployment across ground, and naval units, including programs like “Rolling Stone,” which manages Palestinian movement and registry data.
Microsoft engineers have also provided the Israeli military with almost 20,000 hours of technical support, holding one-on-one development meetings and training workshops for soldiers.
The campaign’s key figures are Hossam Nasr and Abdo Mohamed, both of whom were fired from Microsoft after organizing a vigil for Palestinian victims. They emphasized that Microsoft’s AI technologies were not just passively sold but integrated into military operations through intimate collaboration.
Microsoft’s AI models– alongside their partner openAI— have been used to selectively bomb targets in Gaza and Lebanon, AP notes, revealing how Israel has been able to enact such catastrophic damage in such a short amount of time.
In an interview with The New Arab, Nasr, and Mohamed detail the suppression they faced, wherein HR would “either weaponize existing policies and selectively apply them” or “completely invent new policies to suppress our movement.”
Despite this, the campaign took off, culminating in the interruption of the Keynote speeches at the anniversary event. The viral event saw Vaniya Agrawal and Ibtihal Aboussad call AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman a “war profiteer.”
“You have blood on your hands,” Aboussad charged before being escorted out “All of Microsoft has blood on its hands.”
The petition specifically calls for four key actions: ending Azure contracts with the Israeli government and military, full disclosure of Microsoft’s ties to Israel’s military-industrial complex, support for a permanent ceasefire, and protection of employee speech. More broadly, it aligns with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which recently added Microsoft as a priority target.
Protesters urge boycotts of Xbox products, Microsoft devices, and especially Co-Pilot, its flagship AI tool now reportedly used in military applications.
The New Arab, Maghrebi
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