Project Nimbus is a deal between the Israel government and Amazon and Google, wherein the two companies offer cloud services solutions to the former’s military. The deal is worth $1.2billion for the two companies. Back in 2021, when the deal was signed, about 400 employees working for the two tech giants had signed an open letter to their respective senior leadership teams. The services include both storage and computational resources, which enable the user to train powerful artificial intelligence. The employees at both the companies revealed that they were aware how their technology could violate the human rights of Palestinians. They suspected that the deal would lead to systematic discrimination against the Palestinians.
Now, a group of tech workers and community groups have decided to take this protest against Google’s contract with the Israeli military and government to the Google Cloud Next 2023 conference. The conference is being held at the Moscone Centre, in San Francisco, US. The protestors hope to take advantage of the conference to make Google’s customers aware of the consequences of Project Nimbus.
The protestors are of the opinion that Google is going against its own values and ethics by pursuing military contracts such as the Project Nimbus solely for profits.
These protesting tech workers are being backed by the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area in their protest. A similar protest back in 2018 had led to Google deciding against renewing Pentagon’s drone surveillance project called Project Maven.
