Meet the two Microsoft employees who helped shine a light on Microsoft's role in Israel's war on Gaza
It was early 2025, and Ibtihal Aboussad couldn't believe what she had just read.
The company at which she had spent the past three years working as a software engineer in the AI department was actively providing the Israeli military with the AI infrastructure to carry out what several leading human rights groups and experts have described as a "genocide" in Gaza.
In the stream of stories she had parsed through, Abbousad found that through an initiative called Project Azure, Microsoft was providing a range of computing services to support Israel's military operations, including AI operations that helped the Israeli military conduct operations in Gaza.
These products, including a suite of communication technology, were being used by the Israeli army's notorious Unit 8200 and Unit 81, as well as an air force unit, known as the Ofek, to build "kill lists".
She was horrified. Not only was she an employee at Microsoft, she was part of the AI division itself.
Microsoft is a household name around the world for popular software like Office or its operating system, Windows, or for being the parent company of the X-box console, or for best-selling games like Candy Crush. Aboussad told Middle East Eye that like many others, she was unaware that they were also providing cloud storage, computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and facial recognition, among a collection of services for the Israeli military.
She was even more shocked to find that as the war on Gaza expanded, so too did Microsoft's entanglements with the Israeli military. (more...)
Inside the campaign to end Microsoft's collaboration with the Israeli army
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