Brad Smith, chairman of Microsoft Corp., at the Web Summit Conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Wednesday, May 28th, 2025.
James McDonald | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft They asked police to eliminate people who have entered the headquarters building inappropriately in the protest that Israeli forces are using company software as part of their invasion in Gaza.
On Tuesday, current and former Microsoft employees of apartheid group No Azure protested inside a building on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, and enrolled in the office of the company’s president, Brad Smith. The protesters filed a court summon notice in his office, according to a group’s statement.
“Obviously, when seven people do that as they do today — they raid the building, occupy the office, kick others out of the office, rough equipment in rough form, in the form of a phone, in the form of a phone, behind the book, behind the phone,” Smith told reporters during the briefing.
“When they were asked to leave and refused, that’s not okay. That’s why Redmond police had to literally take them out of the building.”
Smith said of the seven people who entered his office, two were employees.
Smith said the company has not retaliated against employees expressing their opinions, but it differs if it poses a threat. Microsoft will consider whether to discipline employees who participated in the protest, Smith said.
Entering Microsoft Building 34, Azure for apartheid protesters demanded that the company cut ties with Israel and demanded suspicions of the country’s genocide.
Tech’s Megacap companies are working more with defense agencies, particularly as the demand for advanced artificial intelligence technologies increases. While many of these activities have already been controversial, the issue is becoming even more intense as Israel escalated its military attacks in Gaza.
last year Google 28 employees were fired after trespassing at the company facility. Some employees have access to the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google’s Cloud Unit, which has a contract with the Israeli government.
Azure for Apartheid has not held a series of actions this year, including Microsoft’s Build Developer Conference or celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary. Bloomberg on Tuesday told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the protests continued.
Last week, apartheid azure had not adopted protests around the company’s campus, leading to 20 arrests in a day. Smith said 16 of the 16 people have never worked for Microsoft.
The Guardian reported earlier this month that Israeli military used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to store Palestinian phones and led the company to approve a third-party investigation into whether Israel is based on the company’s technology for surveillance.
“I think the responsible step from us is obvious in this kind of situation: to go and get to the truth about how our services are being used,” Smith said Tuesday.
Most of Microsoft’s work with the Israeli Defense Forces involves Israeli cybersecurity, he said. He added that the company is “deeply” concerned about the Israelites who died in the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, and the hostages that have been taken away tens of thousands of civilians since their deaths from the war.
Microsoft intends to provide technology in an ethical way, Smith said.
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