Google, Amazon; Did you mean ‘Genocide enablers’?
I’m not going to lie. There was a time, not very long ago, when I, too, believed that certain giant companies hold higher values than others. The more modest their beginnings, the humbler their founders, and the more worker-friendly their offices were, the more I bought into that idea. I hardly think it’s an overstatement that most of us view companies like Google and Microsoft more favorably than some others like Amazon, Tesla, and Meta (formerly, Facebook). Not all of that was due to my naivete. As time went by, I discovered more and more, through investigative journalists and whistleblowers, that companies spend lavishly on carefully curating their image. On the more disturbing side of it, they employ tactics like releasing information about their dealings to the public, signing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), settling lawsuits, and firing and silencing workers who speak out to keep the lid on their shady business. On the less disturbing side of it, the faces of the company put out a sweet, cheery, and friendly air to themselves and their management style just to stand out from the crowd of cutthroat, money-hungry CEOs and build a loyal clientele. The two companies in question today arguably took one of these paths: Amazon took the former path while Google took the latter. Yet, they converged when they signed basically the same contract with an obvious evil force: the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
By Reza Raadfar
Political analyst
Of course, we are talking about Project Nimbus. Like a nimbostratus — the dark rain clouds that it got its name from — it’s been haunting these giants and making their public events gloomy for over two years now, which they should have seen coming over the horizon.
As far as we know — and you will see that it’s a big if — Project Nimbus was a $1.22 billion contract signed by both Google and Amazon in May 2021 to provide cloud technology to the Israeli cabinet. Some would argue that providing services to the most benign ministry of the infamous cabinet must have been enough to raise some alarms. What made the contract worse was that the Israeli military was one of the main recipients of these cloud services and apparently more — and that is an important piece of information that was once strongly denied by representatives of Google.
Mind you, the Israeli military and defense ministry have long been accused of committing crimes against the humanitarian rights of Palestinians, Lebanese, and other peoples of the Middle East, even before Israel’s recent onslaught of civilians in Gaza.
If cloud services, which are leveraging powerful computing resources without having to purchase or maintain hardware and software, sound foreign or harmless to you — which shouldn’t be — you’d be upset to know that this is not the only dealing of these parties.
In July 2022, the Intercept reported that training documents for Israeli government personnel indicate Google is providing software that the company claims can recognize people, gauge emotional states from facial expressions, and track objects in video footage. The same mind-blowing technology that helps Google Photos find the exact or similar pictures to the one you have in your computer is at the moment helping the Israeli military to expand its campaigns of arresting, imprisoning, and torturing thousands of Palestinian civilians with little to no evidence in the slim hopes of getting their hands on a captive taken by Hamas.
Employees, concerned public
fight back
If Project Nimbus started in 2021, why did we say that its name has been haunting Amazon and Google for only two years? That’s roughly when some employees came forward with their newfound discovery that the project is not serving peaceful purposes as promised. Since then, they have been organizing protests and trying to keep the public from forgetting that their beloved Google and their indispensable Amazon have been facilitating crimes against humanity — the most recent of which is the genocide in Gaza.
More than 1,000 workers have stepped up and put their careers on the line, and their calls have been responded to by over 97,000 signatories who have backed their cause on notechforapartheid.com. The movement posits that “technology should be used to bring people together, not enable apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism.”
While some big companies — like Microsoft in 2020 — caved under maybe less pressure in the past and changed their way, Google and Amazon have been defiantly and forcefully pushing back.
Google Cloud spokesperson Atle Erlingsson told Wired in September 2022 that the company proudly supports Israel’s government and said critics had misrepresented Project Nimbus. “Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads,” he told Wired. Erlingsson, however, acknowledged that the contract will provide Israel’s military access to Google technology.
According to former Google worker Ariel Koren, who was one of the first instances from many to come of Google firing anti-Nimbus employees, “Google systematically silences Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights.” In March 2022, The Times reported allegations by Koren — at the time a product marketing manager at Google for Education — that Google had retaliated against her for criticizing the contract, issuing a directive that she move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose her job.
Since those early days, employees angry at being made complicit in genocide are not few and far between anymore. They have gathered under the banner of the No Tech for Apartheid movement, but this has not made them immune to retaliation as these giant firms drafted their contracts with their employees in a way that would allow them to hold all the cards.
Alphabet Workers Union, which provides resources to union members in an anti-military working group, has not taken a formal stance on Project Nimbus, either. Mohammad Khatami, a YouTube software engineer based in New York got involved with the Alphabet Workers Union and participated in a small protest of Project Nimbus at a July Amazon Web Services conference in Manhattan. Khatami stressed, “Greed and corporate interests were being put ahead of workers, and I think the layoffs just illustrated that for me very clearly.”
“Google has given us no reason to trust them,” said Joshua Marxen, a Google Cloud software engineer who helped to organize some protests, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I am very worried that Google has no scruples if they’re going to work with the Israeli government.”
As is unfortunately expected from such cases, the three demands of the No Tech for Apartheid movement are simple and moral, so much so that one worries why they should have been demanded for over two years and still not accommodated. The movement demands that Google drops Project Nimbus that provides support to the genocide in Gaza, addresses the health and safety crisis among Google workers from being made complicit in a genocide, and finally, stops the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim Googlers.
Like us, users of Google and Amazon who thought these companies were better than helping a notorious cabinet recognize and profile the oppressed Palestinians, these workers were fooled. Specifically, they were fooled by the repeated claims of both companies to uphold human rights commitments. Amazon had once released Global Human Rights Principles, promising to “embed respect for human rights throughout our business”. Similarly, Google stated that companies “can make money without doing evil”. Now, were they always doing evil to make money or did they recently get stripped of cash and turned to evil? Judging by their unparalleled stock values, I don’t think the second possibility holds any weight, but I like or rather, have to be optimistic for my own sanity.
Not the first faux pas
The two companies have made untoward dealings with other parties before as well. The No Tech for Apartheid movement, with their inside knowledge, has listed a few.
Amazon helps power the deportation-detention machine of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and partners with over 2,000 US police departments to surveil and criminalize Black and brown communities through its doorbell camera Ring.
Meanwhile, Google sold artificial intelligence to the Department of Defense to make its drone strikes deadlier and, despite ending this contract after public and worker pressure, Google still holds ties with the Pentagon.
In recent years, Google workers have objected to military contracts, challenging Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection and its role in a defense program building artificial intelligence tools used to refine drone strikes. Workers have alleged that the company has cracked down on information-sharing, siloed controversial projects, and enforced a workplace culture that increasingly punishes them for speaking out.
If you think these were some shameful, upsetting revelations about your favorite companies, wait till you hear what they have been doing for years to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, where not only there’s no meaningful pushback to adopting horrible policies, but they are also almost surely incentivized by the Israeli cabinet. If you don’t believe this or can easily play the devil’s advocate for Google in the following cases, just remember that a few meters away over the fence, in the illegal settlements, the realities are the total opposite.
Ahmad Abu Shammalh, a computer scientist based in Gaza, noted that selecting Palestine as your location on Amazon may well result in a big reduction in pricing, but the catch is that you have to be an Israeli residing in one of the illegal settlements of the West Bank. If, however, you’re a Palestinian, “Don’t even bother trying this if you’re Palestinian — your package will never be delivered.”
That is if you can load the website. As you may know, Palestine is stuck with 3G networks, and Gaza is still on 2G, while the world, including Israel, is anticipating the possibilities of 5G. “This leaves Palestinians with an underdeveloped and expensive connection, in direct contrast with the other side of the political fence.”
Let’s say you get over that hurdle, too — probably with an iron will and lots of free time on your hand, which, realistically, at least as a Gazan, you won’t have right now as you’re scavenging for food in the densely populated Rafah region. You’ll very soon realize that none of Google’s paid services are available in Palestine. “If you own an Android device, you will not be able to purchase apps,” Akram Abunahla, a Gazan graduate student in Linguistics, wrote to the movement. So, don’t wonder why there aren’t any news and videos coming directly from Gazan citizens. They simply don’t have access to the same apps that you and I do. And that is maybe for the better, since when they did have access, for example in 2018, Israeli forces arrested more than 350 Palestinians because of their posts on social media platforms, according to the Commission of Detainees Affair.
As I researched more and more about the recent scandal of Google firing 50 workers for participating in a protest over its cloud deal with Israel, the rabbit hole got deeper, but unlike Alice, I’m no happier than I was before; quite the contrary. I definitely know more, but it came at a slightly steep price. I lost the last piece of innocence that I had, the piece that allowed me to lean back and trust that at least Google directors have our interests in mind. Apparently, no, their pockets are deeper than any literal or metaphorical rabbit hole.