Microsoft's Build conference interrupted by renewed protests over its ties with the Israeli military

Microsoft is facing more pushback over its dealings with the Israeli military, as The Verge reports that the company's Build developer conference has been interrupted twice by protesters.

The first incident occurred shortly after the start of CEO Satya Nadella's keynote on May 19, when firmware engineer and No Azure for Apartheid organizer Joe Lopez interrupted Nadella's speech to demand he "show them how Microsoft is killing Palestinians," according to a statement released by NOAA. "How about you show them how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?"

Almost immediately after, a second protester, a former Google employee, disrupted Nadella's address again to say that "all tech workers should know that big tech is complicit in the Israeli genocide against Palestinians."

After the protesters were removed from the hall, Lopez sent an email to Microsoft employees accusing company leadership of lying about the role played by Azure in the Israeli military's ongoing assault on Gaza.

"Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza," Lopez wrote. "Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie. Every byte of data that is stored on the cloud (much of it likely containing data obtained by illegal mass surveillance) can and will be used as justification to level cities and exterminate Palestinians."

The second protest occurred on May 20 during an address being given by Jay Parikh, head of Microsoft's CoreAI: An unidentified Palestinian tech worker interrupted Parikh to say "My people are suffering" and call on Microsoft to "cut ties" with Israel: "No Azure for apartheid! Free, free Palestine!"

Microsoft employee group "No Azure for Apartheid," which also held protests outside the event, later confirmed that it had assisted the unnamed worker's protest.

The protests come less than two months after former Microsoft employees Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal interrupted the company's 50^th anniversary event to protest its work with the Israeli military in Gaza. They also happened less than a week after Microsoft issued a statement, referenced by Lopez in his company-wide email, absolving itself of any culpability in Israel's relentless attacks on Gaza.

"Based on our review, including both our internal assessments and external review, we have found no evidence that Microsoft's Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD [Israel's Ministry of Defense] has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct," Microsoft said in its statement.

It is hard to square the claim that IMOD does not use Azure in a way that harms people with the news from Gaza, where more than 53,000 people are believed to have been killed since Israel's attacks began in October 2023 in response to a Hamas assault on Israel, although some estimates put the death toll much higher.

Microsoft gave itself a little wiggle room on the 'we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing' front:

"It is important to acknowledge that Microsoft does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices. This is typically the case for on premise software. Nor do we have visibility to the IMOD’s government cloud operations, which are supported through contracts with cloud providers other than Microsoft. By definition, our reviews do not cover these situations."

Along with these in-person protests at high-profile Microsoft events, the company has also been targeted by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) Movement, which claims Microsoft "knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide."

"Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip," the BDS website states. "Microsoft's extensive ties with Israel's military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide."

Microsoft hasn't yet issued any sort of statement on the incidents but Aboussad and Agrawal, the employees who staged protests against the company's Israeli entanglements in April, were both fired in short order and I'll be very surprised if we don't see a similar outcome in response to these protests. I've reached out for comment and will update if I receive a reply.