The tech giant, Microsoft, is once again under scrutiny for its contracts with the Israeli military amidst the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Recent worker-led protests have highlighted Microsoft’s sale of artificial intelligence models and cloud computing services. However, Microsoft asserts that its internal and external reviews have found no evidence of its products being used to inflict harm in the region.
Microsoft’s announcement on Thursday stated that it had conducted thorough internal and external reviews concerning the Israel Ministry of Defense’s utilization of its products. The company emphasized taking the concerns “seriously” and declared “no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.” The specifics of the external review, including the contracted company and details beyond “interviewing dozens of employees and assessing documents,” remain undisclosed. Microsoft also acknowledged the limitations of its review, citing a lack of visibility into software usage on private servers or systems outside its cloud infrastructure.
Tensions within Microsoft have been escalating since a February report revealed the substantial $133 million contract with Israel. According to AP News, the Israeli military’s utilization of Microsoft and OpenAI technology surged almost 200-fold following the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian resistance groups. The military employs Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to process data gathered through mass surveillance, including phone calls and text messages, which the system transcribes and translates. This data, amounting to over 13.6 petabytes, is stored on Microsoft servers—a volume approximately 350 times larger than the entire Library of Congress.
Last year, Microsoft terminated two employees for organizing an “unauthorized” vigil commemorating Palestinian lives lost in Gaza. In February, five employees were ejected from a town hall meeting for protesting the Israeli contracts. Last month, during Microsoft’s 50th-anniversary celebration, Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer on the AI Platform team, publicly confronted the company’s head of AI.
Aboussad condemned Microsoft as a “war profiteer” and urged them to “Stop using AI for genocide.” She further emphasized Microsoft’s complicity, stating, “You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands.” The Verge reported that Aboussad also circulated an email to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft employees, asserting that “Microsoft cloud and AI enabled the Israeli military to be more lethal and destructive in Gaza than they otherwise could,” and promoting the No Azure for Apartheid petition.
Microsoft’s statement comes just a week before a planned protest by No Azure for Apartheid at a Seattle conference. In its blog post, Microsoft maintained that the Israeli military is bound by its terms of use, which mandate “responsible AI practices” and prohibit using its technologies to “inflict harm on individuals or organizations” or for any purpose “prohibited by law.”
However, this assurance is undermined by Israel’s documented human rights violations. Last year, independent human rights experts declared that “Israel has openly defied international law time and again, inflicting maximum suffering on civilians.” These violations, as detailed by the United Nations’ Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, include murder, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement, attacks on hospitals, and the deliberate destruction of food systems.
The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 50,000 according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and a Reuters analysis revealed the complete elimination of at least 1,200 families. While debate continues on whether Israel’s actions constitute “intent to destroy,” the initial week of the response to the October 7 attacks resulted in over 5,000 deaths, prompting a significant shift in expert opinion on the issue of genocide. South Africa formally filed genocide charges against Israel last year.
Big Tech’s support for Israel has been ongoing for years, including Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus. While Microsoft attempts to minimize its role by claiming its technology wasn’t directly used to cause harm, its services arguably enable the Israeli military’s actions in Palestine.
