Amazon and Google have signed a deal with the Israeli government, including the military, offering them cloud services solutions as part of Project Nimbus, which is a $1.2 billion deal for both the companies.
Almost close to 400 employees working for the two tech giants have signed an open letter to the senior leadership teams of both the firms. The services include both storage and computational resources, which enable the user to train powerful artificial intelligence. The employees at both the companies have said that they are not naïve, and that they well understand that their technology will further lead to the violation of the human rights of Palestinians.
The employees suspect that this deal will lead to systematic discrimination against the Palestinians.
In the open letter, the employees have demanded that the senior leadership teams reconsider and cancel the deal altogether. The employees observed that they have been associated with these firms because they make a larger impact on people globally, but cannot withstand being involved in unethical practices that may lead to chaos for humanity.
Similar instances of employee activism have been seen in the past. Last year, when the George Floyd murder case erupted, the employees wrote an open letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google, asking to stop the sale of technology to the US law enforcement department. Also, during the same time, Amazon and Microsoft stopped selling their technology to US Law enforcements till things were not regularised by the government.
In 2019, Google employees demonstrated their displeasure at the Company’s collaboration with the US military and Chinese government, which they said further promoted development of war crimes and weapons, following which the Company had to cancel the deal.
