Google has fired an employee who publicly criticized the company’s relationship with the Israeli military. According to CNBC, the event occurred on Monday at the “Mind the Tech” conference in New York City, where Barak Regev, the managing director of Google Israel, was giving a presentation. In the middle of Regev’s lecture, a former Google Cloud developer stood up and said, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.” He further stated that “Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger,” alluding to Google’s $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli military and administration for cloud services. The employee exclaimed, “No cloud for apartheid,” before being dragged away.
“Proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide.”- Google employee
Google acknowledged the termination following CNBC’s first reports. According to the company’s spokesman, Bailey Tomson, “Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation, interfering with an official company-sponsored event.” “This behaviour is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies,” said a company spokeswoman. Meanwhile, “No Tech for Apartheid,” an organization opposed to the initiative Nimbus, issued a statement detailing the dismissal of the Google engineer who challenged the initiative.
“Google’s aims are clear: The corporation is trying to silence workers to hide their moral failings. Google is enabling the world’s first AI-powered genocide through Project Nimbus. Through this contract, Google and Amazon are aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid state and genocidal campaign in Gaza against Palestinians. Instead of cleaning up its own house, and dropping its contract with a genocidal regime, Google is punching down on its own workers,” the organisation wrote. It continued, “As a cloud software engineer on critical technology that enables Project Nimbus to run on sovereign Israeli data centres, this worker spoke from a place of deep personal concern about the direct, violent impacts of their labour. They spoke from a deep belief that truly ethical engineering must account for the impact on communities around the world.” The Google employee was asked how he was feeling after getting fired, to which he responded, “Proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide.”