The tech giants' corporate offices in New York, Seattle, and San Francisco drew demonstrations over an Israeli government cloud contract opponents say could have military uses.
workers and their supporters gathered near the company’s downtown San Francisco offices Thursday, raising signs that read “No Tech for Apartheid” and filling the air with chants of “Tech from Amazon and Google! You can’t claim that you are neutral!”
Similar scenes unfolded outside Google and Amazon offices in New York and Seattle, and a Google office in Durham, North Carolina. Google and Amazon employees were joined at the rallies by tech workers from other companies and Palestinian rights organizations. They all convened to protest Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.show the contract including AI technology such as face detection, video analysis, and sentiment analysis.
In an email, Google Cloud spokesperson Atle Erlingsson wrote that Google Cloud proudly supports numerous governments, including Israel’s. He accused protestors of misrepresenting Project Nimbus, saying that “Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads," but acknowledged that the contract will provide Israel's military access to Google technology. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The demonstrations retread familiar territory for Google, where in 2018 thousands of workers signed a letter condemning a Pentagon drone surveillance contract, Project Maven. Dozens of employees resigned over the deal, which also prompted outcry from academics, including Google cofounder Larry Page’s former Stanford adviser.
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