A fired Microsoft engineer has stepped forward to detail the motivations behind a sustained employee-led protest movement, revealing a deep and personal ideological war being waged inside the tech giant over its cloud and AI contracts with the Israeli military. In a recent interview on a GeekWire podcast, Hossam Nasr, a key organizer with the activist group No Azure for Apartheid, articulated the campaign’s ultimate goal.
“The point is not to disrupt. The point is, ultimately, to make it untenable to be complicit in the genocide.” This statement cuts to the heart of a conflict that has escalated for months, pitting a growing faction of activist employees, who believe their work is enabling human rights abuses in Gaza, against a corporation that insists it has found no evidence of harm while simultaneously taking measures to quell the spreading internal dissent.
The internal struggle has repeatedly and dramatically spilled into the public domain, creating a significant challenge to Microsoft’s carefully curated image as an ethical technology leader. For the wider tech industry, the turmoil at Microsoft is a potent case study in the rising power of employee activism, which is increasingly demanding accountability for how powerful technologies are used by governments around the globe.
A Campaign of Escalation
The employee protest movement has been marked by a series of increasingly bold and public confrontations. While tensions had been simmering for months, the conflict boiled over in April 2025 when employees disrupted a high-profile company event celebrating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary.
During the event, software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad directly challenged AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, accusing the company of hypocrisy for claiming to “care about using AI for good” while allegedly selling “AI weapons to the Israeli military” and facilitating what she called a “genocide in our region.” Aboussad and another protesting engineer were subsequently fired.
This set the stage for even more visible disruptions at Microsoft’s flagship Build developer conference in May. On the first day, firmware engineer Joe Lopez interrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote, shouting about Palestinian civilian deaths. The renewed protests at its Build conference continued into the second day when a Palestinian tech worker interrupted a keynote by Jay Parikh, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of CoreAI.
The protester was heard shouting, “Jay! My people are suffering! Cut ties! No Azure for apartheid! Free, free Palestine!” before being removed by security. Reports indicated the disruptions were widespread, affecting at least three executive sessions and involving confrontations between previously fired engineers and Microsoft’s head of security for AI. Microsoft’s response has remained consistent: termination for the employees involved in the public disruptions.
The ‘Complicity’ Debate
At the center of the dispute is the chasm between Microsoft’s official position and the activists’ accusations of complicity. On May 16, the company published a report stating that internal and external reviews found “no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.” In the statement, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to its Human Rights Commitments and its AI Code of Conduct.
However, the report also critically acknowledged “significant limitations” in the company’s ability to verify how its technology is used on private servers or systems outside of its direct cloud services.
Activists immediately seized on this admission as a core contradiction. Speaking to GeekWire, Hossam Nasr argued that it is impossible to claim no harm is being done while simultaneously admitting a lack of insight into how the technology is used on Israeli military servers. This view is echoed by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which designated Microsoft a “priority boycott target” in April 2025.
The BDS website claims Microsoft’s Azure cloud and AI services are “crucial” tools for “empowering and accelerating” what the movement describes as Israel’s “genocidal war” on Palestinians. These concerns have been amplified by media reports, including one from AP News, detailing the alleged use of AI systems like “Lavender” for targeting in Gaza, which the “No Azure for Apartheid” campaign says its petition is meant to stop.
A Battle Over Internal Speech
As public protests intensified, the conflict moved inside Microsoft’s digital walls. On May 22, the company took the significant step of filtering internal mass emails containing keywords such as “Palestine” and “Gaza.” A company spokesperson told The Verge that the company implemented measures to limit such emails to only those employees who had opted in to receive them.
The “No Azure for Apartheid” group, however, decried the move as “an attempt by Microsoft to silence worker free speech” and a discriminatory act of censorship. This action did not occur in a vacuum.
Employees had previously reported that critical posts on internal platforms were suppressed and that an invited talk by a Palestinian journalist was canceled in late 2023, fueling accusations that the company was stifling dissenting voices long before the email filters were implemented.
A Sector-Wide Reckoning
The ethical dilemma at Microsoft is not an isolated incident but reflects a broader reckoning across the tech industry. Striking parallels are evident at Google, which shares the multi-billion dollar Project Nimbus cloud contract with Amazon to serve the Israeli government. Leaked documents suggest Google knew it would have “very limited visibility” over Israel’s use of its AI and cloud technology but proceeded with the contract anyway.
According to a report from The Intercept that reviewed the internal documents, the situation prompted one international law expert to warn, “It sounds like Google is giving the Israeli military a blank check to basically use their technology for whatever they want.”
This mirrors the core concern at Microsoft, where a growing number of employees are no longer willing to accept corporate assurances at face value. They are instead demanding transparent, verifiable accountability for the real-world impact of the powerful technologies they help create.
The sustained and organized nature of the protests at Microsoft signals a new phase in tech activism. The conflict is no longer just about specific contracts but about the fundamental principles that govern one of the world’s most powerful industries.
As employees continue to challenge the line between providing a neutral platform and enabling conflict, Microsoft and its peers face an unresolved and increasingly public crisis of conscience, with the outcome likely to shape the future of corporate responsibility in the age of AI.
