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During the Microsoft Build event’s keynote address by CEO Satya Nadella on May 19, a Microsoft employee interrupted the speech, protesting the company’s alleged complicity in the war in Gaza, The Guardian reported.
“Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?” shouted Joe Lopez, a Microsoft firmware engineer who worked on Azure. Security quickly removed Lopez from the venue.
Later that day, Lopez sent a company-wide email defending his actions. “As one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing: demand an end to this senseless tragedy, or we will cease our technological support for Israel,” the email stated, according to The Guardian.
AP reported that Microsoft has fired Lopez.
Growing internal backlash and activist response
This week’s protest was not the first against Microsoft’s contracts with Israel.
On April 6, Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal disrupted a Microsoft 50th anniversary event, accusing the company’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, of being a war profiteer. Both of those Microsoft employees were dismissed.
On May 15, a worker-led group called No Azure for Apartheid (Noaa) was protesting outside against Microsoft’s AI and Azure cloud-computing contracts with the Israeli military. In addition, Noaa organizer Anna Hattle sent an email to company leadership that day claiming Microsoft’s technology is enabling a “genocide… at a much greater scale.”
Microsoft denies role in Gaza violence
On May 15, Microsoft published a blog post titled “Issues Relating to Technology Services in Israel and Gaza.” While Microsoft acknowledged its commercial contracts with Israel, it claimed the company “found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.”
Microsoft confirmed providing “limited emergency support” following the October 7 Hamas attacks to assist hostage recovery efforts, adding that the support was offered with “significant oversight” and didn’t violate its ethical policies. However, Microsoft said it lacked visibility into how customers use its software on their own servers or other devices.
Activists have challenged Microsoft’s assurances about Gaza. “There is no form of selling technology to an army that is plausibly accused of genocide… that would be ethical,” former Microsoft employee and Noaa organizer Hossam Nasr said in an interview with GeekWire. He also noted that Microsoft’s statement failed to mention Palestinians, Palestine, or the Palestinian people.