Google has fired an employee who publicly protested the company’s involvement in the Israeli military.
The incident reportedly occurred on Monday during the Mindful Tech conference in New York, where Barak Regev, managing director of Google Israel, was speaking. CNBC.
During Mr. Regev’s speech, a former Google Cloud engineer stood up and declared: “I refuse to develop technology that supports genocide or surveillance.”
“Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members at risk,” he added, referring to Google’s $1.2 billion cloud services contract with the Israeli military and government.
“No clouds of segregation,” the employee shouted before being escorted out.
This morning at MindTheTech, an Israeli technology industry conference in New York, a Google Cloud engineer had just interrupted Barak Regev, managing director of Google Israel.
“I refuse to develop technology that contributes to genocide!” he shouted, referring to Google’s Project Nimbus contract pic.twitter.com/vM9mMFlJRS
—Caroline Haskins (@car0linehaskins) March 4, 2024
Google confirmed the firing in response to CNBC’s initial report. Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson explained: “Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a colleague who was giving a presentation – disrupting an official company-sponsored event.”
The spokesperson added: “Regardless of the issue, this behavior is not good and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.”
Meanwhile, No Tech For Apartheid, a group opposing the Nimbus project, released a statement About the firing of Google engineers who protested the project.
“Google’s goal is clear: The company is trying to silence its employees in order to cover up their moral failings. Google is enabling the world’s first AI-driven genocide with Project Nimbus. Through this contract, Google and Amazon are enabling Aiding and abetting Israel’s apartheid state and Gaza’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians. Instead of cleaning up its own house and abandoning contracts with genocidal regimes, Google is cracking down on its own employees,” the group wrote.
It continues, “As a cloud software engineer responsible for critical technology that enables Project Nimbus to run on Israeli sovereign data centers, this worker has deep personal concerns about the direct, violent impact of his labor. They firmly believe that the real Ethical engineering must consider the impact on communities around the world.”
The Google employee was asked how he felt after being fired, and he responded: “I’m proud that I was fired for refusing to participate in genocide.”
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