Microsoft Workers Protest War Profiteering by Paul Craig Roberts

Microsoft Workers Protest War Profiteering

March 13, 2019 

Microsoft Workers Protest War Profiteering

Be Interesting to see if they all are fired

Paul Craig Roberts

A global coalition of employees of the Microsoft Corporation is demanding that a contract for work with the U.S. Army be dropped.

Some employees —I don’t know the percentage—have sent an open letter to both the CEO and the president/chief legal officer of Microsoft stating alarm that “Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the U.S. Military, helping one country’s government ‘increase lethality’ using tools we built. We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used.”

The employees say that Microsoft has previously licensed technology to the US military, but until a recent contract Microsoft has not crossed the line into weapons development. “With this contract, it does. The application of HoloLens within the IVAS system is designed to help people kill. It will be deployed on the battlefield, and works by turning warfare into a simulated ‘video game,’ further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed.”

The employees tell the company that ‘intent to harm is not an acceptable use of our technology” and that they “do not want to become war profiteers.”  The employees demand that the IVAS contract be canceled, that Microsoft cease developing weapons technologies and appoint an external ethics review board to ensure Microsoft does not “empower the U.S. Army’s ability to cause harm and violence.”

One wonders why the employees’ demand left out the Air Force, Navy, CIA and NSA. Nevertheless it is encouraging that after 20 years of murderous mayhem created in the world by the criminal and corrupt Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump Regimes, some people finally found their voice.

I owe my awareness of this protest by Microsoft employees to RootsAction.org.  The protest is vastly under reported.  RootsAction.org supplies this news source: https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/23/microsoft-employees-demand-military-contract-be-dropped  and the letter to management from the employees:  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5746790-Microsoft-HoloLens-Letter.html 

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