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Microsoft’s annual developer conference was disrupted on Monday by another employee protest, as political tensions at the tech giant continue to flare.
Joe Lopez, a firmware engineer at Microsoft, interrupted a keynote speech being delivered by CEO Satya Nadella with a pro-Palestinian protest, before being escorted out by security.
The subject of the employee’s protest, Microsoft’s AI and Azure cloud-computing contracts with the Israeli military, has led to a series of flashpoints in recent months between a group of Microsoft workers - No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) - and their employer.
What did employee protester say to Microsoft CEO Nadella?
As Nadella delivered his keynote speech for Microsoft’s annual Build conference, Lopez only had time to call out three sentences before being removed from the venue by security.
“Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?” the engineer shouted. “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure? As a Microsoft worker, I refuse to be complicit in this genocide.”
Another co-protester who filmed the incident was also escorted out by security, yelling: “Free Palestine.”
Microsoft’s chief exec, meanwhile, continued his speech and attempted to raise his voice over the protest.
Lopez did not finish his protest in the event itself. Shortly after, the employee sent an email outlining his decision and further criticizing his employer.
He also published the letter on Medium, through NOAA, a worker-led group of current and former Microsoft employees that have orchestrated a series of protests against the tech firm.
“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 letter said. “If leadership continues to ignore this demand, I promise that it won’t go unnoticed. The world has already woken up to our complicity and is turning against us. The boycotts will increase and our image will continue to spiral into disrepair.”
The engineer told his colleagues he was “shocked by the silence of our leadership,” including Nadella and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, following a similar protest in April. Two Microsoft workers disrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event and called Suleyman a "war profiteer." Both were subsequently fired.
Disagreements over Microsoft’s contracts with Israeli military
NOAA has been protesting Microsoft’s contracts with the Israeli military for over a year, accusing the company of “supporting and enabling an apartheid state."
The group cited media reports that claim Israel’s military expanded its capabilities for mass surveillance and information gathering by using Microsoft’s Azure and AI technology.
“The Israeli Occupation Forces are carrying out this genocide at a much greater scale thanks to Microsoft cloud and AI technology,” one Microsoft employee and NOAA member wrote in a letter to company leadership last week.
On the same day, Microsoft officially addressed the protests and concerns for the first time in recent weeks.
“We’ve heard concerns from our employees and the public about media reports regarding Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies being used by the Israeli military to target civilians or cause harm in the conflict in Gaza,” the company wrote in a blog post on May 15. “We take these concerns seriously.”
The company said an internal review 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.”
It did little to quell the ongoing frustrations felt by NOAA and some Microsoft employees.
“Their statement falls far short of what we are demanding,” Lopez wrote in his email to Microsoft’s staff, claiming the audit was “nontransparent” and accusing his employer of telling a “bold-faced lie.”
Protesters: To fire or not to fire?
While Microsoft’s blog post represents a concerted attempt from the firm to address employee concerns, the outcomes of previous protests have shown that it is also prepared to take a hard line on staff who disrupt events and launch verbal attacks on executives.
The company is yet to publicly comment on Lopez’s protest, but the engineer has acknowledged that past cases show his stunt could result in losing his job.
“I wouldn’t have risked my career and my livelihood if I didn’t believe that to the core of my being,” Lopez added in his letter. “It’s terrifying to speak up, especially right now.”
Microsoft is not the first employer to encounter difficulties managing employee protests over relationships with Israel’s military amid the ongoing conflict.
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In 2024, Google similarly fired workers who staged a sit-in protest in the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, against the company’s “Project Nimbus” contract with the Israeli government.
Google’s VP of Security said the firings were justified as “their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened,” and that the firm would “continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination.”
A statement from the No Tech For Apartheid group said: “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.”
Handling protests in the workplace
The examples of Google and Microsoft are a reminder of the increasingly political division and frustration that employers must handle in the workplace. Although protests akin to the interruption at Build are a clearer form of advocacy spilling into unwanted disruption, there are also smaller instances to deal with, from colleague disagreements to uniform disputes.
While the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and assembly more generally allow for peaceful protest, employees must understand that these rights are not available to employees in a private workplace.
However, employers must be prepared to engage with employees on divisive issues and avoid leading any groups to feel unheard, marginalized, or unsupported in their concerns.
While outright bans on political debates at work have been adopted by employers like Google, failing to create space for frustrations and comments to be heard will likely lead to bigger flashpoints that require drastic intervention from employers, including termination, alongside knock-on effects for the organization's brand and reputation.
Whatever the stance an employer chooses to take, the very minimum is communicating clear rules of engagement that allow employers to safeguard their operations and employees to understand how, where, and when they can expect meaningful engagement on contentious but important topics.
