There’s a public petition - separate from the employee petition
Art rock legend Brian Eno has called on Microsoft to sever its ties with the government of Israel, saying the company’s provision of cloud and AI services to Israel’s Ministry of Defense “support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organizations, the United Nations experts, and increasing numbers of governments from around the world, as genocidal.”
Eno’s connection with Microsoft goes back 30 years—he composed the famous boot-up jingle for Windows 95 that was recently inducted into the National Recording Registry at the US Library of Congress.
“I gladly took on the project as a creative challenge and enjoyed the interaction with my contacts at the company,” Eno wrote in an open letter posted to Instagram (via Stereogum). “I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”
Regardless, Eno clearly isn’t interested in Microsoft’s protestations of innocence: “Selling and facilitating advanced AI and cloud services to a government engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing is not ‘business as usual’. It is complicity. If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes, you inevitably become complicit in those crimes.”
An employee also just bypassed email filters to protest Microsofts support of war crimes.
they blocked “palestine” but not “palestinian”?
This seems a pretty straightforward regex blunder. “Palestin” with a wild card would have done the trick.
I’ve been an Eno fan my entire life, but I had no idea that he invented that sound. I wonder if he gets a royalty for every sale?
It reminds me of the “DUN DUN” sound from Law & Order, composed by Mike Post. I read that he’s collected over $20 million in royalties from that sound alone.
One doesn’t really “invent” sounds so much as compose them. Inventing would be more like creating the theremin.
As to the iconic Law & Order sound, damn, that’s a pretty sweet gig. Do something once and ride it for decades.
When the guy who composed the song “Itsy Bitsy, Teeny Weenie, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” died, I read that he called the song a “non-stop money making machine.”
When he died he called it…? I assume before he died?
God damn, shits gotten serious now if he’s involved. I guess Microsoft got no other option but to listen.
“I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”
While it’s very chivalrous of Eno to do so, clearly the same people are no longer running the company. The new management is probably going “Brian who?” with sincerity in the question.
30 years is a long time in corporate culture. Eno isn’t a corporate guy so maybe he really just doesn’t understand how fast things can change with changing leadership.
He’s not saying this because he has influence with Microsoft directly. He’s doing it because he’s Brian Eno and he will be heard, and because of the respect he’s earned amongst his peers, he will be heard by people with even louder voices. So Microsoft and other companies and consumers will hear. Hopefully with enough acts like this, companies are shamed enough that it affects their bottom lines enough that they stop supporting genocide.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say most people under 35 have no idea who he is. Hell, unless they’re re a music aficionado, they probably don’t know who he is, no matter the age.
He was that one guy who made that one track, right?
(I’m 45 and know damn well who he is.)
Also 45, I have heard the name, but I don’t know who he is.
Is he calling for Hamas to surrender?
Honestly, I struggle to draw a connection between world conflict and non-military technology like Windows or cell phones or whatever.
Is every single Israeli resident complicit in what their government is doing? None of them should be allowed to use Windows? What about Israelis outside of Israel? What about people who support Israel? What about (gasp) Jews? How do you even enforce any of this without massive overreach by the companies?
Call on Microsoft or Apple all you want, ultimately I don’t think a company should ban sales to customers on the argument that those customers might not have morals aligned to the company. Not that it’s even possible, with world supply chains being what they are.
Microsoft continues to provide the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal efforts targeting Palestinians.
https://www.972mag.com/cloud-israeli-army-gaza-amazon-google-microsoft/
‘Order from Amazon’: How tech giants are storing mass data for Israel’s war
The Israeli army is using Amazon’s cloud service to store surveillance information on Gaza’s population, while procuring further AI tools from Google and Microsoft for military purposes, an investigation reveals.
Is every single Israeli resident complicit in what their government is doing? None of them should be allowed to use Windows?
This is not about Israeli citizens using Windows. This is about Microsoft’s contracts with the Israeli military and government.
Umm Microsoft does sell military technology to Israel. So does Google. Idk why none of the previous commenters mentioned that. Edit: actually, they did. People are not asking for Microsoft to stop selling Windows in Israel.
Also jumping from possible restrictions on Israeli citizens (like how Iranians and Russians are treated) to Jews is a wild leap that’s only used to paint criticism of Israel as having racist origin. Not saying you’re doing that, but it doesn’t really make sense to say this.
massive overreach by the companies?
The US is a world leader in the “corporations are people” shenanigans. The massive overreach is fait accompli.
Corporations get to do their “Speech” in all kinds of ways such as funding political initiatives, dictating the healthcare their workers receive, etc. In this context, your point falls very flat.
Also, it is general practice in many places that businesses (even those who are not “people”) can refuse to service customers for arbitrary reasons as long as they do not break some superseding law in the process. You can refuse entry to people with dogs, if you don’t like dogs. But usually not to people with service animals, because having a service animal may be a protected class. (On the basis of having a service animal. Of course, if someone comes with one pet dog and one service animal, you don’t have to let the pet in.)
I do not know of any jurisdiction that sets out doing genocide as a protected class.
I just don’t see it doing any good. Why would Israel’s military, supplied with US military hardware, care about Microsoft? Or Apple or Google or Amazon or… I’m sure none of their critical military infrastructure is in danger if one or several of these companies turn on them.
And how does Microsoft even enforce this ban? Turn off Windows remotely? It’s not even clear how such a ban on Israel-linked business would work.
If world governments want to put sanctions on Israel and Gaza to try and make the two governments come to the table, I think that’s a much better strategy.
It is actually pretty easy to answer questions like this by searching the web. Below, I have done some work for you.
First, though, gotta say that the most generous reading of your arguments is that you are philosophically defeatist and suffer from “the perfect is the enemy of the good”---- why do anything except the one final action that will solve it for good? If that is your attitude, why bother posting on a forum? Why bother doing anything?? To learn about the broader strategy, you could try Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions - Wikipedia. Nobody is arguing that MS should be targeted instead of promoting governments to sanction and remove the subsidies that keep it afloat. But Brian Eno thinks he has more sway with MS than with the US government, so that’s what he’s throwing his back into.
The protests come a few months after the publication of an investigation by The Associated Press which found that Israel’s use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology “skyrocketed” following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which prompted Israel’s deadly campaign on the Gaza Strip. Multiple human rights groups have said Israel is guilty of committing genocide or “acts of genocide.”
Specifically, the investigation found that artificial intelligence “models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon.”
Ex-Microsoft employees expose company’s role in Gaza genocide, quoting Hossam Nasr:
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.
According to human rights and media reports, since the beginning of the ongoing war on Gaza in October 2023, Microsoft has provided direct technical support to the Israeli occupation army worth at least $10 million through its Azure cloud platform.
Reports revealed that Microsoft’s support included data management services, the development of targeting systems, advancements in surveillance technologies and the provision of cutting-edge AI tools. These include ‘Lavender’, an AI-powered system designed to identify bombing targets, which has faced accusations of being linked to the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Furthermore, the reports accuse Microsoft of supplying biometric surveillance technologies to track Palestinians. This comes as the death toll has surpassed 50,800 people, including more than 18,000 children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
In a statement, Skyline asserted that Microsoft’s continued support of Israel violates the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The organisation urged the company to transparently disclose the nature of its relationship with the Israeli occupation and to terminate all forms of cooperation linked to military activities that breach international law and human rights.
the most generous reading of your arguments is that you are philosophically defeatist
That’s probably a fair assessment.
But I feel like the core of my argument remains: I’m not disputing that MS or Google or Amazon or Apple services are sold to people and orgs who use them to commit evil. Of course they are.
But these aren’t munitions. They are general-purpose computing products being turned to evil outcomes by bad actors. The article, for example, cites Microsoft’s open-source LAVENDER, which is a general purpose image and video analysis tool for AI. Describing it as:
‘Lavender’, an AI-powered system designed to identify bombing targets
This simply isn’t true. Somebody in the Israeli military used LAVENDER to process video data to identify bombing targets, like somebody might use a hammer to smash someone’s head in. The articles you cite are full of rhetorical tricks to imply that Microsoft corporate had some hand in the decision making, but it’s genuinely all “well the Israeli military has some Azure servers, therefore Microsoft killed people”.
Which militaries should Microsoft (or Google or Apple or Amazon, etc) be allowed to sell products to? Who makes that determination? A cohort of employees or consumers? NGOs?
If government makes the call – distilling a public consensus on the matter, one hopes – then I can see some reasonable way to approach this question.
EDIT: Details on LAVENDER:
