Protest Escalates Internal Revolt and Years of Community Opposition to Company’s $1.2 Billion ‘Project Nimbus’ Contract With Israeli Military and Government

(San Francisco, CA)––This evening, at the Google offices in San Francisco, over 500 Google workers and community activists participated in a ‘die in’ to protest the company’s business relationships with Israel. This protest was an escalation of workers’ call for Google and Amazon to drop their $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli military and government, and represents the first action targeting big tech since Israel’s genocidal campaign began on October 7.

“I am horrified and disgusted that Google is exploiting their workers’ labor to sell the cloud services that we make to the Zionist Israeli government so hellbent on colonizing all of Palestine and killing men, women, children, and destroying everything in its path while doing so. Google had a record high revenue of 280 billion dollars, and a record profit of 60 billion in 2022. The absurd greed to provide a government shamelessly pursuing apartheid with advanced AI technologies for a 1.2 billion dollar contract split with Amazon is a poison that needs to be stamped out in this company that is so captured by infinite growth they willingly support genocide,” stated Valerie Kuan, a trans Google Platforms and Ecosystems software engineer and organizer with No Tech for Apartheid.

Part of a campaign called #NoTechforApartheid organized by tech workers, civil society, and community members, these protests represent the rapidly growing movement of tech workers taking public action against these contracts. This action follows almost two years of activism by Amazon and Google workers to pressure their respective companies to cancel their cloud contracts with Israel. Last September, on the heels of Google worker Ariel Koren’s forced resignation, Amazon and Google tech workers led protests with hundreds in attendance in front of their offices in New York City, San Francisco, Durham, and Seattle.

“If you listen to mainstream coverage of prominent, Silicon Valley, AI proponents and their supposed worst fears of this technology, they will have you believe that AGI will soon develop a mind of its own, decide to enslave humanity, end the world, and other preposterous, rehashed, science fiction narratives. The reality is that these concerns only serve as convenient diversions from the myriad of very real and already present ways that AI is being used to wrought harm on our world today. Google and Amazon’s 1.2 billion dollar contract with the Israeli military and government facilitates the first AI-powered occupation and genocide which has already taken the lives of 18,000 Palestinians and injured over 40,000 more–mostly women, children, and noncombatants–just this year, highlighting the exceedingly morally contemptible ways that our tech leadership has decided that they can exploit the labor of Google workers to turn a profit," stated Alonso Salas, a Google worker and organizer with No Tech for Apartheid.

Citing the well-documented human rights abuses and violations of international law committed by the Israeli government and military against Palestinians, thousands of workers at Amazon and Google have called on their companies to stop working on Project Nimbus, based on the potential for this technology to be used to surveil, oppress, or commit other forms of violence against Palestinians. Tens of thousands of others have joined those workers’ calls.

“While almost 20,000 civilians have been murdered across Gaza and the West Bank, Google continues to supply Israel with the technology to execute mass destruction.” said Rami Abdelkarim with the Palestinian Youth Movement. “The internal fractures within Google over Project Nimbus reflect the public’s growing demand that complicity in genocide will not be tolerated. As long as this contract stands, Google’s hands are stained with the blood of the Palestinian people.”

To date, Amazon and Google executives have ignored their workers’ demands. Workers describe the contract as “part of a disturbing pattern of militarization, lack of transparency and avoidance of oversight.”

“Project Nimbus blatantly spits in the face of Google’s self-proclaimed values, its commitment to “significantly improving the lives of as many people as possible.” Meanwhile, Google leadership’s response to workers’ drop Nimbus demands–retaliating against organizers, in particular Arab and Muslim organizers–has shown that Google leadership only values their own commitments and workers’ demands insofar as it doesn’t hurt Google profit,” stated Marie Vachovsky, a Google worker and organizer with Project Nimbus.

“Google’s brash disregard for human lives, Google’s willingness to support a genocide–will not be forgotten to the tides of history. It will not be forgotten by the workers and the users alienated by Google’s actions. We are strong together, and our movement to drop Nimbus is only growing.”