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A Google cloud engineer, executive director of the company’s Israel business, at the MindTheTech conference in New York Interrupting Barak Regev’s speech, “I am a Google software engineer and I refuse to build technology that enables genocide or surveillance!” He was seen shouting. As he was escorted out by security, he referenced Project Nimbus. This project is consistent with the $1.2 billion contract Google and Amazon won to provide artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies to the Israeli military.
The incident took place at the conference, which was held under the theme “Support Israeli Technology” and became the theme of this year due to the slowdown in investments in Israel after the October 7 Hamas attacks. Journalist Caroline Haskins, who was thrown out by security, told the details of what she witnessed, but could not fully elaborate on the details because she was not there until the end of the event.
Google and Amazon’s controversial project: Nimbus
Last year, a group of Google employees published an open letter urging the company to cancel Project Nimbus. The letter criticized “hate, mistreatment and retaliation” against Arab, Muslim and Palestinian employees within the company. Engineer: “Project Nimbus poses a danger to members of the Palestinian community! “I refuse to build the technology that will be used for cloud separation,” he said.
After the protesting engineer was removed from the venue by security, Regev told the audience, “One of the privileges of working in a company is to give stage to different views,” and ended his speech after the intervention of a second protester.
After the Google engineer interrupted the event, he said, “I want other Google Cloud engineers to know that standing in solidarity with the communities impacted by your work is engineering.” He reportedly said. The engineer spoke to the journalist anonymously to avoid professional consequences, but Google made it clear who he was.
“Earlier this week, an employee interfered with an official company-sponsored event by interrupting a colleague who was giving a presentation,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget. “This behavior is unacceptable regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.” said.