Google fires employee who protested Project Nimbus deal with Israel government

Google has terminated an employee who publicly criticised the company’s involvement with the Israeli military during a keynote speech in New York at the annual Mind the Tech conference.

The incident occurred on Monday when an employee from Google’s Israel branch protested against the company’s collaboration with the Israeli military.

The now-dismissed Google Cloud engineer disrupted the event by shouting, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”

Confirming the termination, Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson stated, “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.”

The protest targeted Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between the Israeli government and tech giants Google and Amazon, reported CNBC. This initiative aims to enhance access to cloud services but has raised controversy since its inception in 2021. Critics argue that such technologies facilitate surveillance and data collection on Palestinians, raising ethical concerns.

In recent weeks, over 600 Google workers signed a letter addressed to leadership asking the company to drop its sponsorship of the annual Mind the Tech conference, which promotes the Israeli tech industry, as reported by CNBC.

“No Tech For Apartheid,” an organisation opposing Project Nimbus, released a statement regarding the firing of the protesting Google engineer.

“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 centers, this worker spoke from a place of deep personal concern about the direct, violent impacts of their labor. They spoke from a deep belief that truly ethical engineering must account for the impact on communities around the world.”