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Microsoft’s annual Build conference in Seattle has been met with major setbacks from protests over claims of power military operations in Gaza. Two days in a row, the meetings have been disrupted by people shouting “Free Palestine.” The protests are part of a growing campaign called No Azure for Apartheid. It is targeting Microsoft’s cloud contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense.  The group has been protesting for more than a year. The Azure cloud software was used by the Israeli Air Force’s Ofek Unit to keep track of databases of possible targets for deadly airstrikes and by Israelis to spy on Palestinians. +972 Magazine says that leaked papers also show that Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel. The three major disruptions in Microsoft’s meetings The first disruption was caused by Joe Lopez, a Microsoft hardware engineer who worked on parts of Azure, the company’s cloud-computing platform. Security quickly led him out of the Build conference after speaking out against the company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella. “Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians,” Lopez yelled. “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?” Afterward, Lopez sent an all-staff email explaining his decision to stage a protest. The email read, “As one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing: demand an end to this senseless tragedy, or we will cease our technological support for Israel.” The second one happened as Microsoft’s head of CoreAI, Jay Parikh, was on stage discussing the company’s Azure AI Foundry efforts. A Palestinian tech worker interrupted his keynote to protest against the same issue. When Parikh went back to his keynote, he stumbled over his words. Then, one of his Microsoft coworkers came on stage to…

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Filed under: News - @ May 21, 2025 6:25 pm