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Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

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Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#61
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly people involved in the Israeli government that have expressed genocidal intent. The problem is that you can say that about basically every state in the world. It can't be the case that the moment a state commits an ethnically-targeted war crime it is per se committing genocide because you can find someone in the majority, the opposition, or the administrative state that has embraced genocidal logi…

I'm no genocide expert, but it does seem like legal scholars who _are_ genocide experts agree that the facts here seem to clearly meet the bar. The people who you credit with "hav[ing] the better side of the legal argument" do not seem, from my vantage, to be arguing in good faith. They are trying to bog us down in semantics when a truly horrifying crime is happening, and saying that we can't call a horse a horse is…

Really the only thing that moved me to comment here, besides message board vulnerability amplified by waiting for a Rust compile run to finish, was the implication upthread that mass displacement of populations was genocidal. The rest of it I don't think there's enough daylight between us to debate usefully.

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#62
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds This is a good thing. American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but ignored that in favour of $$$ per the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deepli…

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Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#63
post #25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was held in the U.S., not in Gaza, at Nethermead Lawn in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. There are also other Gaza 5K events in U.S. cities, including Dallas and Milwaukee, depending on the year and location.

They had one in Gaza.

When? Where? Citation needed.

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds This is a good thing. American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but ignored that in favour of $$$ per the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deepli…

> American companies should not be allowing their tech to ... Do they have a choice?

In what dimension do you mean? Legally? Yes, unless based out of a place with an anti-BDS law. Politically? Sure, it's a bet against those currently in power and for the sentiment in the population. Practically? Yes, they can refuse business and contracts. I suppose they could also put killswitches in their hardware/software, but I wouldn't be a fan of that for digital-rights reasons. Economically? Who knows, the market makes no sense at all currently. They could probably get away with whatever.

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#66
> In September 2025, Microsoft decided to unilaterally terminate the usage agreement with IDF intelligence Unit 8200 after an article published in the UK newspaper "The Guardian," which claimed that the unit was collecting information about Palestinians for the purpose of fighting terrorism

Ok but ... isn't Microsoft forced, by law, to cooperate with the US government and US military? So why is that then not an ethical (or other) issue?

To me this seems inconsistent. The only "necessity" I see is for Microsoft to be penalised by EU laws, which could explain that "investigation" to some extent. But the EU in general is super-weak. They even give data from EU citizens to the US government as-is, without any problem, so I don't quite buy into that explanation. Is there another explanation that makes more sense?

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#67
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds This is a good thing. American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but ignored that in favour of $$$ per the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deepli…

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Agreed, but then Germany is also to be held liable as it supports Israel and allows the USA to use its bases there to bomb people in far-away countries. So there is a huge inconsistency here, IMHO.

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TIL that Microsoft is the least Israel-friendly of the big three clouds This is a good thing. American companies should not be allowing their tech to be used to in the gross ongoing human rights violations in Israel/Gaza/West Bank. Google and Amazon knew their tech could be used for human rights abuses in Israel (their lawyers warned them so) but ignored that in favour of $$$ per the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deepli…

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Like... all of us 300 million plus? Thanks dude.

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#69
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> Yeah but when you read the article it comes across less like 'Microsoft doesn't want its services used for ethics violations' and more 'The unethical genocide Israel is doing uses some servers in the EU exposing Microsoft to legal and regulatory issues'. You are incorrect. Microsoft has made clear that it is related to all of its Azure services that were misused with regards to its terms of services, not just those…

Ok, so The Guardian was incomplete in its assumptions. But Microsoft's explanation also does not make sense - see how they have to support any war waged by the US government. They would have had to support the Vietnam war, if were were in that era back. Something does not add up here still.

Re: Microsoft Israel chief leaves amid ethical controversy

#70
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Being anti-Israel is a bipartisan position in the US among the constituents but not among the representatives (yet)

There's bipartisan consensus among both constituents and representatives. They're just the opposite consensus.
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