Protests at Microsoft Conference Target Tech Giant’s Ties With Israeli Military

Protestors gathered outside San Francisco’s George Moscone Center on Tuesday at Microsoft’s largest annual conference to demand that the tech giant cut all remaining ties with the Israeli military.

The group of former and current Microsoft workers descended on Microsoft Ignite, which had attracted over 15,000 attendees to showcase the company’s latest cloud and Artificial Intelligence innovations.

Organized by the group No Azure for Apartheid, the demonstrators claim that despite recent policy changes, Microsoft continues to provide essential cloud computing services supporting Israel’s military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Microsoft thinks that they can pacify us with these half measures,” said Joe Lopez, a former engineer who disrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote speech in May. “We are here until Microsoft cuts all ties with Israel.”

After reports surfaced that the company’s technology was being used for mass surveillance of Palestinians, Microsoft reportedly cut off access to some of its services for Unit 8200, an Israeli military intelligence unit. It also introduced a new internal reporting mechanism for employees to flag practices that they believe may violate company policies.

But the protesters argued that this step was insufficient, claiming the company still maintains contracts with other branches of the Israeli military and government.

They also called attention to Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform that allows clients to rent powerful computing and storage capacity over the internet.

Organizer and former Microsoft worker Hossam Nasr explained that modern military operations require massive data processing for surveillance and AI targeting systems, capabilities that the Israeli government cannot maintain without external support from major tech firms.

He referred to cloud and AI services as “the bombs and bullets of the 21st century.”

“The Israeli military would not have been able to be as destructive, as deadly, as brutal in its genocide in Gaza, if it were not for the technology provided by Microsoft,” Nasr said.

Before the rally unfolded outside the conference center, there was a disruption inside — Microsoft employee Patrick Fort interrupted CEO Judson Althoff’s opening keynote speech and resigned in protest.

Fort, a senior software engineer who had been at Microsoft for seven years, worked on systems supporting the Azure platform. He said he sent a mass resignation email to his colleagues before standing up in the bleachers to shout at Althoff. He was then escorted out by personnel.

“I recognize that my work at Microsoft, my labor, is enabling the genocide in some small way,” Fort told KQED shortly after leaving the venue. “The only way I saw to effectively stop that was to leave.”

In a statement responding to Monday’s protest, a Microsoft spokesperson said that “appropriate teams are engaged to help minimize these disruptions.”

“We respect the right to peaceful assembly and ask that it be done in a way that does not cause business disruption,” the statement read.

Fort acknowledged that for many tech workers, the conflict can feel distant, but he urged his former colleagues to consider the downstream effects of the software they build.

“We all have to draw a line for what our work enables,” Fort said. “Ultimately, I believe that we, as individuals, have to think more than just [about] our own self-interest.”