NEW—@theintercept reports Google’s latest attempt to cover up its bloody ties with the Israeli military.
Google was due to host the Israeli “Defense” Tech Conference at its Tel Aviv campus of Google for Startups in November, but when The Intercept questioned them about it, the event page disappeared and the company denied this was ever the plan.
This is the *SECOND* time just this year that Google has lied about its affiliation and/or sponsorship of an Israeli military-related conference (see our previous slides on the IT for IDF for more).
This follows a repeated pattern of Google denying and hiding its ties to the genocidal Israeli military who is responsible for the deaths of over likely 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza, close to 1,000 in the West Bank, and 1,800+ people in Lebanon.
Google’s pattern of continual lying and obfuscation – from the military applications of Project Nimbus, their $1B cloud contract with Israel to its sponsorship of multiple IOF-related conferences and events this year – is beyond shameful and shows how deeply invested the company is in being a military contractor. Google clearly knows that it’s bad for their image to be this closely affiliated with Israel’s military during its genocidal campaign — but we demand the company take actual material action instead of shamefully hiding and lying about its complicity.
Workers refuse to allow our labor to be used to power Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Amazon and Google must end their Project Nimbus cloud computing contract with Israel, and cease doing business with Israel’s Occupation Forces and apartheid state.
We won’t stop organizing until our companies stop powering this genocide and until Palestine is free. We call on all tech workers of conscience to join our fight.
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join No Tech For Apartheid ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
#NoTechForApartheid #DropProjectNimbus
NEW—@wired reports on kGoogle profiteering from the Israeli government’s misleading and false propaganda ad campaigns used to discredit and defund the UN’s Gaza aid agency UNRWA.
Several current and former Google workers tell WIRED the anti-UNRWA campaign is just one of many that Israel has orchestrated in recent months to target users, including in North Africa and the Middle East.
UNRWA employs ~30,000 people to educate, feed, and provide care for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza and neighboring areas.
Google continues to put profit over Palestinian lives. While Google claims to “deter” misinformation, its policies clearly enable Israeli propaganda to spread unchecked and undermine humanitarian efforts during a genocide. All the while, Google is powering that same genocide via its $1.2B cloud computing contract with Israel called Project Nimbus.
Tell Google: STOP aiding and abetting genocide, enabling and profiteering from Zionist propaganda campaigns, and DROP Project Nimbus now.
Demand Amazon & Google stop doing business with Israeli apartheid &
powering the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza ➡️ notechforapartheid.com
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join No Tech For Apartheid ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
NEW—@Time reports on ~200 workers at @Google’s DeepMind — a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory — who signed a letter calling on the tech giant to drop its contract with military organizations.
The letter calls on DeepMind’s leaders to:
1. Investigate allegations that militaries and weapons manufacturers are Google Cloud users
2. Terminate access to DeepMind technology for military users
3. Set up a new governance body responsible for preventing DeepMind technology form being used by military giants in the future.
GOOGLE HAS DONE NONE OF THESE THINGS.
The militarization of the tech industry has grown exponentially over the last few decades, powering state violence, imperialism, and genocide. Project Nimbus, Google’s $1B cloud contract with Israel that is powering the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, is the direct result of the tech industry’s sharp investment in militarism. Google and Amazon continue to pursue lucrative military contracts with no regard for human life. Google and Amazon tech powers state violence from the U.S. to Palestine, but we did not join Google or Amazon to work for military contractors or to create “warfare” technology.
That’s why we won’t stop organizing until our companies drop Project Nimbus, stop powering the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and until Palestine is free.
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join No Tech For Apartheid ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
Demand Amazon & Google stop doing business with Israeli apartheid & powering the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Sign the petition here: notechforapartheid.com
NEW—@electronicintifada reports on No Tech for Apartheid’s resistance to Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services and infrastructure to Israel’s apartheid state and genocidal military. From an anti-imperialist framework, hundreds of tech workers have protested the deal for enabling the mass surveillance, oppression, and AI-powered genocide of Palestinians since 2021. And on April 16, 2024, NOTA organizers and Google workers staged historic coast-to-coast sit-ins at Google offices in Sunnyvale and NYC. In response, Google fired 50 of their own workers in retaliation.
Omar Zahzah argues Project Nimbus represents the convergence of US Big Tech’s “colonial, racial, and surveillance capitalist tendencies” and Israel’s Zionist settler-colonialism in what he terms “digital/settler-colonialism”, further enabling Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
“Should Project Nimbus continue, in effect digitally streamlining Israel’s current genocide of Palestine, Indigenous elimination would go from a question of strategic convergence to the ethical, political, and ideological lodestar around which Big Tech coalesces,” Zahzah writes.
The article emphasizes the importance of worker narratives of worker resistance and labor organizing, which is exposing the false divisions between tech workers and challenging the industry’s insulation against collective action in imperialist dissent.
“The power of storytelling is everything,” [former Google worker Zelda Montes, who was fired and arrested during April’s sit-ins] said. “It’s what can’t be taken away when empire takes over everything else. And it’s what can help us move towards a vision of tech that does the work of helping to liberate rather than helping to oppress.”
The labor movement is a critical arena of resistance in anti-imperial, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist liberation struggles. Workers can build the power necessary to force an end to the genocide. We, the workers, won’t stop organizing until Google and Amazon stop powering the genocide of Palestinians and until Palestine is free!
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join the NOTA campaign ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
NEW—Jewish Engineer at @Google and member of @notechforapartheidUK Marc Cohen resigns, citing Project Nimbus, Google’s $1B cloud contract with israel that is powering the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Marc, who was a Staff Developer Engineer at Google London, also resigned over Google’s retaliation against workers who are speaking out against the contract and the company’s lack of concern for the working conditions of workers who do not want their labor to power a genocide.
Marc was an engineer at the company for over 13 years, and like many fellow workers, he escalated concerns about Project Nimbus to executives regularly, concerns which continue to go unaddressed.
Google execs @sundarpichai @thomasortk are shameless genocide profiteers & their commitment to being the backbone of the war machine is by design. They obscure their complicity because they know their actions will alienate workers. Since the genocide began, @google execs have only doubled down on their partnership with Israel and the genocide it is committing in Gaza.
Google is only able to function because of us, its workers. We do not want our labor to be used for genocide & apartheid. Google execs are few and we are many.
Google and Amazon workers won’t stop organizing until our companies stop powering this genocide and until Palestine is free. We call on all tech workers of conscience to join our fight.
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join us ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT — @jeremycorbyn spoke at the #NoTechForApartheid Rally in the UK over the summer, here’s a clip of his speec in support of @google workers with the #NoTechForApartehid campaign who were fired in April after staging historic coast-to-coast sit-ins in NYC and the Google Cloud CEO’s office in Sunnyvale, CA demanding the company drop their $1.2B cloud contract with Israel’s military currently powering the genocide in Gaza. Workers also rallied in support of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Googlers who have faced immense racism, discrimination and retaliation at the company.
We’re deeply grateful for Jeremy Corbyn’s support of workers and the campaign!
In May 2021, Google and Amazon signed Project Nimbus. Despite Google’s continual lies that Project Nimbus is not directed towards military workloads, Israeli press releases have named the IOF as a leader of the project from the start, and in April 2024 Google deepened their partnership of the IOF by signing a new contract providing a secure entry point to Google computing infrastructure. This allows multiple IOF units to access Google’s automation technologies, store and process data, and AI services — all while it inflicts the most technologically advanced genocide in history on Palestinians in Gaza.
Google and Amazon workers won’t stop organizing until our companies stop powering this genocide and until Palestine is free. We call on all tech workers of conscience to join our fight.
Are you a Google and Amazon worker? Join NOTA campaign ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
Take action to demand the companies drop Nimbus: notechforapartheid.com
NEW—@wired reports on the 1100+ STEM students and young workers from more than 120 universities, who signed the #NoTechForApartheid pledge to refuse jobs or internships at @Google & @Amazon until the companies stop powering the genocide in Gaza and cut Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services and infrastructure to Israel’s apartheid state and genocidal military.
The tech student-talent pipeline is a priority for big tech companies — this is their talent pool and disrupting it is key. The NOTA student pledge includes signatures by students from top STEM and “big tech feeder schools” like Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Harvard - as well as HBCUs that Google actively recruits at in order to maintain a façade of “diversity” and “commitment to racial equality” — all while providing tech to policing, mass surveillance and the genocide in Gaza.
We call on all students of conscience to join workers in demanding #NoTechForApartheid on university campuses worldwide.
With over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza murdered, injured, or missing under the rubble of Israel’s bombs, these STEM students’ demands could not be more urgent.
DISCLOSE, DIVEST
WE WILL NOT STOP
WE WILL NOT REST
We won’t stop organizing until our companies stop powering this genocide and until Palestine is free. We call on all tech workers of conscience, as well as students in STEM and beyond, to join our fight.
Are you a STEM student? Sign the pledge ➡️ notechforapartheid.com/students
Google/Amazon worker? Join NOTA campaign ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
Take action to demand the companies drop Nimbus: notechforapartheid.com
WHAT IS PROJECT NIMBUS? — a deep dive into Google and Amazon’s nebulous cloud contact with Israel that is powering the genocide in Gaza.
In May 2021, Google and Amazon signed Project Nimbus, $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government and military. Despite Google’s lies that Project Nimbus is not directed towards military workloads, Israeli press releases have named the IOF as a leader of the project from the start, and in April 2024 Google deepened their partnership of the IOF by signing a new contract providing a secure entry point to Google computing infrastructure. This allows multiple IOF units to access Google’s automation technologies, store and process data, and AI services — all while it inflicts the most technologically advanced genocide in history on Palestinians in Gaza.
Further, a recent @WIRED investigation uncovered statements by Israeli officials confirming that Nimbus is a crucial component in the Zionist entity’s genocidal assault on Gaza. This February, the head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate and war criminal Gaby Portnoy said: “phenomenal things are happening in battle because of the Nimbus public cloud, things that are impactful for victory.”
We refuse to allow our labor to be used to power Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Amazon and Google must end their Project Nimbus cloud computing contract with Israel, and all tech corporations, including Microsoft, must cease doing business with Israel’s Occupation Forces and apartheid state.
We won’t stop organizing until our companies stop powering this genocide and until Palestine is free. We call on all tech workers of conscience to join our fight.
Google/Amazon worker? Join NOTA campaign ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
Take action to demand the companies drop Nimbus: notechforapartheid.com
BREAKING—Joint statement from @Amazon, @Google, & @Microsoft workers organizing with the #NoTechForApartheid and @NoAzureForApartheid campaigns in response to yesterday’s Just Vision media/972+ Mag investigation revealing even more details on the corporations’ role as the technological backbone of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Swipe for full statement ➡️
Not unlike IBM’s assistance to Nazi Germany in surveilling, calculating, assigning death to Jewish people during the Holocaust, Big Tech corporations today are directly assisting the Israeli military in its genocidal campaign. Amazon, Google, & Microsoft are the technological backbone of this genocide.
AWS enables the Israeli military to search for and store information about almost every single Palestinian in Gaza–giving Israel ongoing access to unprecedented amounts of information to power its genocide. In fact, Israeli military intelligence used data stored on AWS ‘to provide ‘supplementary information’ ahead of airstrikes against suspected military operatives, some of which killed many civilians.’ The ease with which Amazon, Google, & Microsoft allow Israeli military intelligence access to data storage services to store and retrieve vast troves of intelligence data has been compared to the ease with which consumers around the world can “order from Amazon.”
We refuse to allow our labor to be used to power Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Amazon and Google must end their Project Nimbus cloud computing contract with Israel, and all tech corporations, including Microsoft, must cease doing business with Israel’s Occupation Forces and apartheid state.
We won’t stop organizing until our companies stop powering this genocide and until Palestine is free. We call on all tech workers of conscience to join our fight.
Google/Amazon worker? Join NOTA campaign ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
Microsoft worker? Follow @noazureforapartheid
🔴 WEDNESDAY, JULY 24: GENOCIDAIRE & WAR CRIMINAL BENJAMIN NETANYAHU WILL ADDRESS CONGRESS 🔴
Calling all tech workers! Join our contingent of tech workers, led by No Tech for Apartheid workers in the DMV, as we surround the US Capitol to protest Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress while he carries out a genocide against the Palestinian people. We refuse to let a war criminal walk the streets of DC!
We will be linking up with the larger labor contingent — find our banner!
📅 Wednesday, July 24
⏱️ Tech workers contingent meetup at 10:30 AM, joining the labor contingent
📍 Meet at Pennsylvania Ave & 4th ST, Washington DC 20003 (near John Marshall Park)
🚌 Not from DC? Find a bus near you at answercoalition.org/arrest-netanyahu
#ShutItDown4Palestine #WeAreTheRedLine #NoTechForApartheid
BREAKING: Autonomous group of designers disrupt Screen to Screen, @Wix’s quarterly event series focused on web design. Wix, an Israeli company which operates on stolen Palestinian land, has fired employees for expressing support for Palestine, encouraged employees to push Zionist propaganda, and made racist remarks about Gazans.
Wix is currently recognized as an organic boycott by @bdsnationalcommittee, and these protestors are demanding artists divest from working with the company.
BREAKING—statement from @Google workers with #NoTechForApartheid on Google’s announcement of massive $23B investment in Israeli tech startup as @wired confirms Project Nimbus’ active role in the genocide of Palestinians:
Over the weekend, Google execs announced they are planning to invest a staggering $23 billion in Israeli cloud security startup Wiz, heralding the corporation’s single largest investment in an acquisition. Google’s growing investment in Israel despite the country’s genocide of Palestinians is a major slap in the face to the growing masses of Google workers across the globe who have spoken out against and clearly state their opposition to the company’s business with Israel.
This announcement comes as a bombshell exposé from @wired yesterday morning confirmed that Nimbus—Google & @Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion cloud contract with the Israeli military and government is inextricably linked to Israel’s current genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
In February, 5 months after Israel began its genocide in Gaza, the head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Gaby Portnoy, credited Project Nimbus tech for aiding the campaign: “Phenomenal things are happening in battle because of the Nimbus public cloud, things that are impactful for victory.” He added that Google/Amazon have been “working partners” on creating “a framework for national defense,” calling it the “Iron Dome of Cyber”—a reference to the “Iron Dome,” Israel’s missile system.
Google execs @sundarpichai @thomasortk are shameless genocide profiteers & their commitment to being the backbone of the war machine is by design. They obscure their complicity because they know their actions will alienate workers. This investment is an escalation by execs to double down on their partnership with Israel and the genocide it is committing in Gaza.
Enough is enough. Google is only able to function because of us, its workers. We do not want our labor to be used for genocide & apartheid. Google execs are few and we are many. We commit to escalate our organizing commensurately.
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join us ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
@AMAZON COLLUDED W CITY AND STATE POLICE AT AWS SUMMIT NYC TO REPRESS NO TECH FOR APARTHEID WORKER-ORGANIZERS OF COLOR. Swipe for full statement ➡️➡️
Using its vast surveillance empire, Amazon ordered local & state police to—without cause—tail, ID, & kick out two tech worker-organizers of color with the No Tech For Apartheid campaign who registered to attend the @amazonwebservices Summit in New York City on July 10th.
Amazon would rather collude with both local & state police sergeants, hire backup private security, & surveil their conference attendees to “protect their image”from disruptions calling out their complicity in genocide, rather than actually drop their $1.2 billion Project Nimbus cloud contract with Israel — now entering the 10th month of its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Amazon investing considerable resources in police repression of our workers comes as no surprise—they’re a proud enabler of state violence & partner of police, ICE, & militaries. But it also shows us that Amazon & Google are terrified of the worker power & consciousness we’ve built & continue to build through our global worker movement, with growing presence across four continents.
Amazon & Google may try to surveil, block, intimidate, fire & arrest us—but this only serves as fuel for our organizing. As tech workers we demand Amazon & Google drop Project Nimbus, stop powering the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, & we will not back down until Palestine is free.
Are you a Google or Amazon worker? Join us ➡️ t.ly/NotaGeneralIntake
Tell Google execs to drop Project Nimbus ➡️ notechforapartheid.com
STATEMENT—From @Google workers with the No Tech For Apartheid campaign on Google’s sponsorship of this week’s “IT for IDF” conference in “Israel” this week.
Google’s likely participation in “IT for IDF,” an arms trade conference happening this week in “Tel Aviv,” cements its continued complicity in facilitating the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and is heinous & shameful.
For years, Google has lied to the media, the public, & its workers. Google executives have claimed that Project Nimbus, its joint $1.2 billion cloud contract with Amazon for the Israeli military and government, was “not intended for military workloads” and “focused on civilian contracts.” Despite Israeli & U.S. media proving otherwise, Google has insisted that Project Nimbus did not do business with the Israeli military, which is waging genocide in Gaza.
Google’s sponsorship of “IT for IDF” is yet another example of its deceitful complicity. Google has participated in and sponsored this conference in the past, and continues to cement its ties to Israeli apartheid.
As of July 9, 2024, Google Cloud’s logo no longer appears as a sponsor on the “IT for IDF” website. We note that the logo was present as late as July 8, 2024, which we share below. We have reasons to believe that the abrupt removal of the logo is in part a response to the alarm that Google workers of conscience raised internally. The pitiful act of hiding the logo suggests that the company is well aware of its complicity in genocide and apartheid and is more obsessed with its image than actually removing material support for Zionist state’s decimation of entire family lines of Palestinians in Gaza. If the association with the IOF is compromising enough to hide, we challenge Google to do the right thing and drop Nimbus immediately.
Workers did not join Google to work for a military contractor. Google has no business sponsoring a military conference—let alone one led by the Israeli Occupation Forces that is waging an active genocide that has taken the lives of over 186,000 Palestinians. Google must drop Nimbus and halt all business with Israel. We will not stop organizing until our demands are met & Palestine is free.
At the Seattle Pride Parade, @queertranswarban protested the participation of war profiteers like @Amazon, @Google, and Boeing who use rainbow-washing to distract from their complicity in the genocide in Palestine.
As Amazon workers with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, we stand in solidarity with this action.
We stand against the Israeli occupation using blackmail against queer Palestinians into forcing them to cooperate with the occupation. And, we stand against the mass killing and carpet bombing of queer Palestinians, their families, their friends, and their neighbors.
All companies must drop their contracts with the Israeli government and military, and @amazon must drop Project Nimbus, their $1B contract with Israel’s apartheid state, NOW. No tech or AI for genocide.
