Dozens of Google employees have demonstrated outside the tech giant's headquarters in NYC in protest of what the workers described as the corporation's support of the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.
Google and Amazon have a cloud computing and artificial intelligence contract with the Israeli government and military, a deal known as Project Nimbus that is worth $1.2 billion.
The employees participating in the sit-ins wore shirts that said “Drop Project Nimbus” and a banner was hung that read, “No tech for genocide.”
Protesters sat in the office of Google Cloud Chief Executive Thomas Kurian on Tuesday and remained there for about 10 hours, according to the group.
The workers say the Google-Israel relationship is aiding the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.
They demanded Google and Amazon drop Project Nimbus and stop the “harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship” of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim Google workers who have expressed concerns about company’s work in Israel and the Gaza war.
Google last month fired a worker who protested a speech by Google’s top executive in Israel at a conference in New York.
“As a Software Engineer in Google Cloud, it is horrifying to think that the code I write could be used by the Israeli Military in the first ever AI powered genocide,” said Google Cloud software engineer William (Billy) Van Der Laar from Sunnyvale in a statement.
“We did not come to Google to work on technology that kills. By engaging in this contract leadership has betrayed our trust, our AI Principles, and our humanity.
The protests in the tech industry have escalated in the wake of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 taken hostage.
More than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s air and ground offensive, according to Gaza health officials. (HSW).
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