I am a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance, shouted the protester...No tech for apartheid! The Google worker, a 23-year-old software engineer named Eddie Hatfield, was booed by the audience and quickly bundled out of the room, a video of the event shows.
One of the privileges of working in a company which represents democratic values is giving space for different opinions, he told the crowd. Three days later, Google fired Hatfield.
Hatfield is part of a growing movement inside Google that is calling on the company to drop Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Israel, jointly held with Amazon. TIME spoke to five current and five former Google workers for this story, many of whom described a growing sense of anger at the possibility of Google aiding Israel in its war in Gaza.
No Tech for Apartheid's protest is as much about what the public doesn't know about Project Nimbus as what it does. The contract is for Google and Amazon to provide AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military, according to the Israeli finance ministry, which announced the deal in 2021.
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]