Fired Microsoft Engineers Who Protested AI Use by Israeli Military Say Company ‘Suppresses Dissent’

Key Takeaways

• Microsoft has fired two software engineers who protested against the company’s contracts with the Israeli military.
• Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal disrupted events marking Microsoft’s 50th anniversary.
• Google and Amazon workers have also opposed their employers’ deals with the Israeli state.

Two Microsoft engineers who protested the firm’s decision to sell AI to the Israeli military have been fired.

Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal, both software engineers for Microsoft’s AI department, had their contracts terminated after they interrupted separate events marking the firm’s anniversary.

Protests at Microsoft 50th Anniversary

On Friday, April 4, Aboussad interrupted a speech by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during the firm’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

The software engineer reportedly called Suleyman a “war profiteer” and said Microsoft had “blood on its hands.”

In an email to Microsoft’s leadership after the event,  Aboussad said: “I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice.”

“This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue,” he added.

At a separate Microsoft event the same day, Agrawal interrupted a speech by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

“Over the past 1.5 years, I’ve grown more aware of Microsoft’s growing role in the military-industrial complex,” she explained in an email after the event.

Agrawal accused Microsoft of complicity in “surveillance, apartheid and genocide,” stating that “by working for this company, we are all complicit.”

Big Tech Ties to Israel

Microsoft is among several American Big Tech firms that have come under fire for their contracts with the Israeli government.

In 2024, Microsoft employees started the “No Azure for Apartheid” petition calling on the firm to scrap its cloud contracts with the Israeli government and military.

Similar protests have taken place at Google, where staff have held sit-ins and rallies to protest Project Nimbus —a $1.2 billion joint venture with Amazon to provide cloud and AI services to the Israeli Defence Force.

Employee Activism Causes Tension With Tech Executives

Silicon Valley has long been a hotbed of employee activism. And in recent years, tensions have flared between politically liberal staff and profit-oriented senior executives.

Like Microsoft, Google also fired workers who protested against Project Nimbus.

In a sign of the company’s evolution over time, Google recently dropped a commitment not to develop AI for weapons.

The decision was especially telling, as an employee revolt in 2018 prompted Google to adopt the policy in the first place.

Meanwhile, at Meta,  the firm’s increasingly conservative approach to transgender issues and Big Tech’s step back from diversity, equity and inclusion have also faced a backlash from staff.

Reflecting the widening rift between leadership and employees, Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, recently said that staff who oppose the new policies should either accept the changes or leave .