Under the terms of the arrangement, the companies are offering cloud computing services to the Israeli government.
The goal of the campaign that asks students to refrain from working with Google and Amazon is becoming closer and closer to being accomplished by the alliance of tech workers known as No Tech for Apartheid (NOTA), which is demanding that large tech corporations terminate their ties with the Israeli government. According to Wired, more than one hundred individuals who identify themselves as students of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and young workers have made a commitment to reject employment opportunities with the firms “for powering Israel’s Apartheid system and genocide against Palestinians.” NOTA’s website indicates that the organization’s objective is to collect 1,200 signatures in support of the campaign.
We, as young people and students in STEM fields and beyond, are adamantly opposed to taking any part in these heinous atrocities. According to a portion of the commitment, “We are joining the #NoTechForApartheid campaign to demand that Amazon and Google immediately end Project Nimbus.” As part of Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon were awarded a contract for $1.2 billion to deliver cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military. An earlier statement made by a Google official refuted the notion that the Nimbus contract dealt with “highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
Google and Amazon, two of the largest technology businesses in the world, are also two of the largest employers of people who have completed their education in the STEM fields. According to Wired, the campaign’s commitments come from undergraduate and graduate students attending Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University, all of which are located in the same state as Google’s headquarters.
In the past, NOTA had also organized protests against the connection of technology corporations with Israel. These protests included sit-ins and office takeovers, which resulted in Google firing dozens of employees. Following his loud declaration that he does not intend to “build technology that powers genocide or surveillance,” one of its organizers was terminated from his position at Google in March. This occurred when he interrupted one of the company’s officials while they were attending an Israeli technology conference in New York.