How Israel's war in Gaza changed big tech

When Microsoft told Israel last month that it would be ending its relationship with the controversial Unit 8200, it sent a small glimmer of hope through the tech world. 

Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the National Security Agency in the United States, stands accused of spying on Palestinians, and storing this data on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. 

For years, companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon have been accused of providing the infrastructure to empower Israel to occupy and control Palestinian land.

And until now, the industry has clamped down on employees protesting their investments and brushed off calls for divestment, with companies like Palantir and the co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, openly supporting Israel’s war on Gaza.

But Microsoft's change of position has sparked debate: has Big Tech finally begun to distance itself from Israel - the self-styled “start-up” nation - or is it just managing its image amid mounting evidence that Israel is indeed committing a genocide in Gaza?

Tony Bragg, an organiser with campaign group Tech for Palestine, believes the change in the past two years has been slow but undeniable.

“Initially, the tech world was very subdued,” Bragg told Middle East Eye.

“It took a long time for people to be able to speak up about the genocide - but that was true across most industries.”

'No matter how much executives try to sweep this under the rug, the pressure building from within the company is becoming impossible to ignore'

- Maen Hammad, Eko 

Bragg believes this slow shift was evident when Guillermo Rauch, the chief executive of Silicon Valley-based Vercel, posted a selfie with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Vercel is a popular web development program that allows developers to quickly build, publish and host websites and applications without managing their own servers. 

“That was a key moment where people could see where others in the industry stood,” said Bragg. 

“And we saw a massive number of people condemning it. It spread across social networks, group chats - everywhere.”

For Bragg, the backlash revealed that dissent inside and outside the tech world has been brewing for years, pointing to the controversy around Sean Maguire, an investor at Sequoia Capital, who came under fire for his support of Israel’s war on Gaza.

“It showed that the tech world actually does care, does have an opinion,” said Bragg. 

“For the last two years, we’ve seen Israel and its supporters weaponise accusations of antisemitism to silence conversation within companies and across social media. But those tactics aren’t working anymore. The Zionist investors are on the back foot.”

The roots of grassroots pressure

Central to the global calls for tech companies to divest from Israel is Tech Against Apartheid - a coalition of tech workers and activists who have circulated petitions, staged protests and walkouts over contracts with the Israeli state.

Targets like Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon Web Services' equivalent, stand accused of providing Israel with cloud computing infrastructure that helps power its war machine in Gaza and the West Bank.

Developers drop Vercel, call for boycott after CEO posts selfie with Netanyahu

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Maen Hammad, a spokesperson for Eko, an organisation that campaigns against corporate power, believes workers have been key to driving change and conversations on the role big tech has played in Israel’s ongoing genocide.

“No matter how much executives try to sweep this under the rug, the pressure building from within the company is becoming impossible to ignore,” Hammad told MEE.

“In fact, the more the companies crack down on those speaking out, the more attention they’re bringing to their company’s involvement in facilitating war crimes and genocide.”

During the course of the war in Gaza, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have unilaterally fired workers who have spoken out, subjected them to prolonged internal investigations and, on some occasions, even called the police on them for circulating petitions and holding vigils for Gaza.

But amid the crackdown inside these global companies, workers have continued to find ways to resist their employers, as evidence mounts of the growing cooperation between Big Tech and Israel. 

For tech workers, these alliances have become a rallying point to take action and examples of how unregulated AI and surveillance technology feed directly into systems of occupation and apartheid. 

Before its decision to cut ties with Unit 8200, Microsoft released a statement in August, claiming that it “found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza".

Hammad argues that its decision to step back from Unit 8200 would not have happened without the persistence of workers inside Microsoft.

“Microsoft’s quiet retreat from its Unit 8200 deal proves what workers and whistleblowers have said all along: the company was fuelling Israel’s war crimes,” said Hammad. 

'These companies are interconnected in their complicity, and so our struggles must be interconnected as well'

- Abdo Mohamed, a former Microsoft employee

“It also shows executives understand the legal and material risks of their partnerships with Israel’s military. But this is no victory lap. Microsoft still holds other military contracts and nothing short of full divestment from Israel’s war machine will be a victory.”

Hammad’s concerns are echoed by Abdo Mohamed, a former Microsoft employee, fired for his activism through the No Azure for Apartheid (NAA) campaign.

He is confident that Microsoft’s decision to scale back its services with Israel’s Unit 8200 is as a “partial result” of pressure built through organising, advocacy and disruption, but says “it's far from enough".

“The moment Microsoft withdrew from some services, data was being transferred to Amazon Web services - another big tech company complicit [in the genocide] through Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government,” said Mohamed.

“These companies are interconnected in their complicity, and so our struggles must be interconnected as well.”

Growth of alternatives 

While workers continue to place internal pressure on companies, some are looking for alternative tools and companies not connected to Israel and a way out of the Big Tech firms.

Bragg pointed to a surge in alternative apps and platforms posted online following the backlash against Vercel’s chief executive.

Adil Abbuthalha, who grew up in Silicon Valley, says his disillusionment with Big Tech long predated the genocide and believes these companies only cater to the “top 0.0001 percent of the world".

“This is the first live-streamed genocide. If the most powerful industry in the world can’t move with clarity, then it's up to us to build alternatives ourselves,” Abbuthalha told MEE.

'This is the first live-streamed genocide. If the most powerful industry in the world can’t move with clarity, then it's up to us to build alternatives ourselves'

-  Adil Abbuthalha, founder of Boycat 

Like Bragg, Abbuthalha saw a “unique moment when millions condemned Vercel’s CEO and immediately started building alternatives”.

This conviction, coupled with the war in Gaza, led him to create Boycat, a platform that helps users identify and switch from companies complicit in Israeli war crimes. 

The app has been downloaded by approximately two million people with 10 million people viewing their posts on Instagram every month.

Boycat has since expanded and begun developing alternative tools and platforms, including a VPN Abbuthalha describes as “clean technology” that is built independently of Israeli-linked firms and data centres.

He describes his vision as an alternative “digital silk road” that connects developers and ethical tech projects worldwide to reduce dependence on Western and Israeli tech monopolies.

He believes the emergence of new alternatives is part of a collective awakening as people working in the industry, like so many others, felt a feeling of helplessness as the death toll in Gaza grew day after day.

“The genocide forced people to imagine a different kind of tech world,” said Abbuthalha.

“Two years ago, we wouldn’t be having conversations about building clean, alternative technology. 

“Now everyone is talking about it - how to make sure the genocide never happens again.”