Microsoft celebrated the company’s 50th anniversary on Friday with a splashy event that featured all three of its current and former CEOs, but it did not come without surprises. The Verge reported earlier that an employee by the name Ibtihal Aboussad disrupted a presentation by the company’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, alleging the company has been complicit in genocide by selling its technology to Israel.
“Shame on you,” said Aboussad, speaking directly to Suleyman. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all.”
Aboussad’s LinkedIn profile indicates she is a software engineer on the AI Platform team. After being ushered out of the event, she reportedly sent a memo to a number of internal distribution lists.
In a statement from a Microsoft spokesperson, the company said, “We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard. Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
Aboussad’s memo cites the number of deaths in Gaza amid the ongoing war with Israel, and goes on to note that Microsoft has a $133 million contract with the country’s Ministry of Defense:
The Israeli military’s usage of Microsoft and OpenAI artificial intelligence spiked last March to nearly 200 times higher than before the week leading up to the Oct. 7 attack. The amount of data it stored on Microsoft servers doubled between that time and July 2024 to more than 13.6 petabytes.
Microsoft AI also powers the most “sensitive and highly classified projects” for the Israeli military, including its “target bank” and the Palestinian population registry. Microsoft cloud and AI enabled the Israeli military to be more lethal and destructive in Gaza than they otherwise could.
The tech industry has long had a complicated relationship with the defense sector. Employees of major tech companies, who skew liberal in their views, were long opposed to having their work used on the battlefield. And the leaders of these companies were sensitive to those concerns, despite the lucrative revenue opportunity defense contracts offered.
Things have changed in recent years, however, especially following the beginning of the war in Ukraine and rising tensions around the South China Sea. Companies including Palantir and Anduril have become rising stars at the same time as the likes of Google and Meta laid off thousands and shifted the power away from employees and back to leadership, making it harder for employees to oppose such contracts.
Aboussad in her memo writes about this opposition that employees in tech have long felt: “When I moved to AI Platform, I was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity: accessibility products, translation services, and tools to empower every human and organization to achieve more. I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families.”
One of the big concerns raised about using AI on the battlefield is the proclivity of operators to trust the programs and defer to them for attack plans. It has previously been reported that Israeli soldiers have relied on AI to quickly identify targets without always reviewing their accuracy. And recent messages revealed in the Signalgate scandal demonstrate how military heads will strike indiscriminately and produce collateral damage with impunity—the Trump administration authorized striking a civilian residential building because a target’s girlfriend lived there, a clear violation of humanitarian law.
Big tech companies have been looking for applications of AI, and found it in the military. But even Palmer Luckey, the CEO of Anduril, which makes defense drones and other technology, has expressed sympathy for employees in big tech who signed up to make consumer apps only to find their work used in defense applications. At least those who join Anduril know what they are signing up for.
Microsoft has already experienced other protests over its contracts with the Israeli military. In February, five employees were removed from a town hall event after they stood in a line wearing shirts that spelled out CEO Satya Nadella’s name and asked the question: “Does our code kill kids?”
