Google Has Fired This Engineer Who Called Out Its Role In Supplying Technology To The Israeli Military
The Google Cloud engineer interrupted a speech by Google Israel’s managing director and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”
Google has fired an employee who disrupted a conference to publicly protest the company’s deal that supplies the Israeli government and its military with technology.
On Monday March 4, during the Mind the Tech conference in New York, Google Israel’s managing director, Barak Regev, was delivering a keynote speech when the Google Cloud engineer stood up and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”
“Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger. No cloud apartheid. No tech for apartheid! Free Palestine!” he was heard shouting as he was escorted away by the security.
After the worker is escorted out, Regev then says, “Part of the privilege of working in a company which represents democratic values is giving the stage for different opinions.”
Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion contract between Google and Amazon to provide cloud and computing services to Israel, including its military.
A few days earlier, over 600 Google employees had signed a letter asking Google’s marketing leaders to stop sponsoring Mind the Tech, a yearly conference that promotes the Israeli tech industry, according to Wired.
The letter highlighted Israel’s extensive bombing in Gaza, as well as the humanitarian crisis and the Israeli government’s restrictions on humanitarian aid reaching Gaza.
However, Google fired the engineer, telling CNBC on Thursday, March 7 that the employee had “disrupted a coworker’s presentation during an official company event.”
The spokesperson added that the employee was fired for violating company policies and that such behavior is not okay.
No Tech For Apartheid, an organization opposing Project Nimbus, said on Friday, March 8, that Google is attempting to silence its employees as a way to cover up its unethical practices.
The group said that the worker had spoken from “a place of deep personal concern about the direct, violent impacts of their labor.”
“While touting the importance of “democratic values” in the workplace, Google is shutting down free speech and silencing debate and dissent among workers within the company,” it said in a statement, adding that the company was “enabling the world’s first AI-powered genocide.”
The group said that the Cloud engineer had told human resources while he was being terminated that he was “proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide.”
Since Oct. 7, Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has killed more than 30,000 and injured over 72,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
