Employees Fired After Microsoft AI-Israel Protest

Microsoft has fired workers after it interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration, protesting against Microsoft’s work with the Israeli military on AI initiatives. The protest occurred during a speech by Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft AI, on the company’s Redmond campus in Washington.

The second protester, Vaniya Agrawal, continued to disrupt the event and had already resigned but was asked to leave immediately.

According to the company, such a protest could have been held closer to its shared view than a disruption, and additionally, Aboussad planned to disrupt the event and seek attention. He was also accused by the group No Azure for Apartheid, who held that these two fired employees protested because of the Azure cloud computing contract that Microsoft entered into with Israel.

Previously, Associated Press released a report stating that the Israeli military uses Microsoft and OpenAI assistant tools to target bombing sites in Gaza and Lebanon. The company is responsible for having caused the death of several civilians, including children, in one of these bombing raids.

Microsoft has replied claiming that employees can voice their concerns, but they cannot hold protest within company events. Similar protests last year at Google resulted in dozens of employees being fired when they took the company to task over a $1.2 billion AI contract with the Israeli government known as Project Nimbus.