The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I got work to do. All right. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are bringing y’all a critical update on the tech worker led revolt from within Microsoft and the grassroots movement to pressure Microsoft to abandon its business model of providing technology for the executors of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the Trump administration’s terror campaign of mass surveillance, incarceration and deportation of immigrants here in the United States. This is a story that we’ve been covering extensively here on the show and at the Real News Network for the past year.

As you all may remember, under the banner of the know Azure for Apartheid campaign, current and former tech workers along with community members and supporters have been organizing and taking direct action to expose and put an end to Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli war machine and to disrupt business as usual at Microsoft until their demands are met. I’ve interviewed many former Microsoft workers from the campaign on this very podcast, and I was on the ground in August of last year reporting from Microsoft’s global headquarters in Redmond, Washington when workers launched a liberated Zone encampment on Microsoft’s campus and were subsequently brutalized and arrested by police. And I spoke with workers who disrupted Microsoft’s giant Ignite Conference in San Francisco back in November and this week no Azure for apartheid members were back on the streets for another protest event right next to Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond. The protest was timed with the implementation of Microsoft’s new company policy requiring all Seattle area employees who live within 50 miles of a Microsoft office to return to office work at least three days a week. Here’s a clip from that protest, which was posted by journalist Hannah Kre of the Burner Seattle, which will give you guys just a little sense of what employees heard on their way back into the office.

NOAA member :

Microsoft is providing the technological backbone to Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation in Palestine. Microsoft is providing the technological backbone to ICE’s unconstitutional terror, abductions and murder right here on Turtle Island, also known as the United States Cloud and AI are the bombs and bullets of the 25th century country. And make no mistake, Microsoft is a digital arms manufacturer masquerading as a tech company enabling the massacre of our people in Palestine and our people right here on occupied indigenous land shame.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So to dig into this story today, I am really grateful to be joined by Ibtihal, who is an organizer with the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. Ibal was fired from her role as a software engineer at Microsoft after disrupting a keynote speech by Microsoft ai, CEO, Mustafa Suleman at the company’s 50th anniversary celebration last April. Ibtihal, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Since this is the first time that we’ve gotten to chat together, I wanted to ask if you could start by telling folks a little more about yourself and the work that you did at Microsoft and how and why you got involved with the KNOW Azure for Apartheid campaign.

Ibtihal:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So I was the worker at Microsoft for approximately three and a half years, and I worked as a software engineer within the AI division, and I specifically worked on speech to text technology, which when I joined Microsoft and when I chose that team was marketed as tech for Good, and this is technology that’s used for accessibility to support users with disabilities. And in February of 2025, there was an 18 news report that laid out how this same technology, the speech and translation tools that we as workers at Microsoft develop are being installed to the Israeli military and government to surveil Palestinians. And so it essentially allows them to transcribe and translate every phone conversation, text message, social media posts from Palestinians, whether in Heza or in the occupied West Bank. And so for me, that moment was when I realized that I was told a miss that there’s really no part of this company where you can just work and be silent and claim innocence from its complicity in genocide and apartheid.

And so in that same month, in February of 2025, I reached out to the campaign to know for apartheid and asking to get more involved. I expressed that I was willing to escalate to get cross because as workers have probably mentioned in multiple instances before, we’ve tried different things within Microsoft, within the boundaries quote of what the company prefers that we were met with silence or with repression employees getting fired for a vigil. And so that’s where the April 4th disruption emanated from. It was a direct escalation. After a year of fc, everything we’ve tried internally not lead to any stage within Microsoft. I knew that there was a possibility I would use my job given Microsoft’s history of oppression, but that was that Vanya and I, the two people that disrupted that event, we were willing to pay to bring light to this complicity and sort of put more pressure on the company.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I’m wondering if you could take us back to that day for a second. That must have been a really intense experience to disrupt such a big speech at the 50th anniversary of one of the most powerful companies in the world in existence. Can you tell us a little more about what that was like, what the disruption was, what it was like for you to go through that and what happened afterwards?

Ibtihal:

Yeah, I think luckily we had a couple of weeks of getting ready for this disruption with members of the campaign. We tried to be strategic about the when and the how of the disruption. So I think in terms of that moment itself just felt like a culmination of efforts of many members of the campaign throughout the weeks then and us trying to prepare the words that would have the most impact in that situation. And I think in the moment, I think there was, I guess a coincidence that Mustaf man, the A ICO that I disrupted during his talk at the anniversary event, started repeating some of the Microsoft propaganda that has been infuriating for months, although I have family members who were with Eugene and Microsoft changed their lives and just that usual whitewash thing of Microsoft’s impact on humanity, I guess. So I think that just after hearing that, I think it further made it the right decision to just get up and disrupt in the middle, just witnessing once again, Microsoft trying to hide its complicity and frame itself as the one big tech company as many people.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I know we’re going to be skating over a lot here between that event last April and the event this week. But I’m wondering by way of getting us there, if you could talk about in your own words, in your own experience, how the campaign has grown since then and then, yeah, lead us into the action this week as Microsoft employees were coming back to the office, tell our listeners about what happened, what it was like there on the ground and what the response was.

Ibtihal:

Yeah, so I think the campaign has been consistent trying to answer the call from Huda directly. And the call from Huda has been to continue escalating, to continue doing whatever we can throughout the month. Despite the sham of a so-called peace fire last fall, there was no point where we decided, okay, it’s time to back down or to take a break. And so since April 4th, we’ve had the series of escalations. After that event, we were able to do some more base building because many workers learned about the campaign for the first time and wanted to do something. Many did not know about the complicity layers and wanted to do something. And so since then we’ve had Microsoft build just a few weeks later, disrupted as well. Every single day of the conference, we had another conference like the Responsible AI conference that Microsoft held that or sponsored that Seattle University also get disrupted and shut down. And then it just continued until in August. One of our peak escalation moments was when workers held an encampment at Microsoft Political H two. Also what did in the office of Brown Smith, the Microsoft President, and this was basically us flying every avenue to put pressure on the company. When we saw that after every action we would have, we would just be met with lies with these claims are not true. We investigated ourselves and we thought, no Rob doing.

There was no point where the company tried to meet our demands. And that’s how the encampment and the sit-in happened. And in the same week as well, house visits of the president and CEO of Microsoft. And what happened after that week of action is Microsoft announced that it would cut one of its contracts with the Israeli military and on government, and it was the contract with Unit 8,200, which is Israel’s surveillance unit. And for us that did show that escalation works. We’re seeing a result to these months of doing all we can to put pressure. However, unlike what the company wants us to do, we recognize that it’s not enough, that it’s only one contract, however Microsoft tries to frame it, and that our demands include ending all contracts with the Israeli military and government. And so after that announcement, our campaign continued to escalate, continued to get the message across to Microsoft that one contract is not enough.

That’s how we had the disruption at the Ignite Conferences. As you mentioned, that covered, which was Microsoft’s largest annual conference. And that also led to this week the action on Tuesday, which coincided with Microsoft’s return to office, meaning RTO policy that mandates workers to is returned to the office at least three days a week if they live in the vicinity. Essentially, we’re just picketing, distributing flyers, chanting, giving speeches, honoring Palestinian martyrs, all very peaceful actions to just spread the message about Microsoft’s complicity. But Microsoft’s response was to essentially surveil anyone that was getting on the bridge where the action was taking place, make people throw their badges to create this environment of making it unsafe for workers to engage with the campaign despite it just being like an educational action. So that goes back to show how scared Microsoft is of workers’ power and of workers reclaiming their labor and refusing to remain complicit in genocide and apartheid.

And for us, there were multiple goals to this action this week. One of them, again, was continuing to reiterate that we will not back down until Microsoft’s meet all our demands and fully in its complicity in genocide and occupation. The second one is we knew that for many workers it would be their first time coming to campus and perhaps their first time finding out about Microsoft’s complicity if they never witnessed the other auctions that took place at the hq. And so it was also the moment of trying to spread the research and educate more workers about how their labor is powering this work machine and how Microsoft is exploiting their work to a genocide and apartheid.

And so the conveyor ran out of flyers at the auction because there were a lot of people that were hearing about this for the first time. And we saw people actually try to engage and read the complicity points that we laid out. And it’s important to note that this also comes less than two weeks after The Guardian and plus 9 7 2 Magazine have revealed an additional complicity aspect of Microsoft Executives, which is related to ice. And these two outlets have revealed that ICE’s use of Microsoft Services more than tripled since July of 2025, which shows direct complicity in the mounds, the kidnappings, the terrorism that ICE has been conducting in the us. And so this return to office and this action also came at a point where there is some level of agitation around what side of history Microsoft is on. And so it was important for us to draw the connection between how Microsoft is exploiting workers’ labor to enable these human rights violations and these atrocities globally, not just in Palestine and not just in the us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just to put some more meat on that bone for listeners, and we will link to this article in the show notes for this episode, but as IP Tohar mentioned, the Guardian reported earlier this month that immigration and Customs Enforcement deepened its reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology. Last year, as the agency ramped up arrest and deportation operations, leaked documents reveal ICE more than tripled the amount of data it’s stored in Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform. In the six months leading up to January, 2026, a period in which the agency’s budget swelled and its workforce rapidly expanded according to the files, ICE appears to be using a range of Microsoft’s productivity tools as well as AI driven products to search and analyze the data it holds in Azure files suggest some of the agency’s own tools and systems may also be running on Microsoft’s servers. So I wanted to ask if we could flesh this connection out a bit more because it’s so devastating to read even if it is so unsurprising at the same time.

But this is exactly what you all in the know Azure for Apartheid campaign, the Palestine Solidarity Movement writ large Palestinians in occupied Palestine have been warning about the weapons that are tested and crafted and perfected on us in Palestine are going to come back on you guys in the Imperial Core. And now here we are with Donald Trump’s ice using Microsoft’s Azure platform and a federal government that is just dumping tons of money into the tools that Big Tech is providing it to execute this fascist terror campaign across the country that is literally unfolding as we speak. So I wanted to ask if you could say more, as a former Microsoft worker yourself, what do folks listening to this need to know about Microsoft and big Tech’s complicity in the fascist campaign that we’re seeing from the Trump administration, and what can we learn from the fact that what we are seeing happening in Palestine through Big Tech is coming back here home?

Ibtihal:

Yeah, yeah, that’s a very visible connection now to many people, though as you mentioned, it should have been visible long ago after multiple warnings from Palestinians, from organizers. I think ultimately this all boils down to Microsoft executives putting profit over people. Like in this day and age, they’re seeing that providing the weapons that serve as the backbone of genocide and apartheid is profitable. Israel has money to pay. And so similarly enabling fascism in the US pays, and it just goes back to these executives exploiting workers’ labor to fill their pockets with no regard for human rights or their own outlined principles for ethical technology use with no regard for workers principles. Because most Microsoft workers would not want their labor to enable fascism in their own country. And it just goes back to the priorities of these executives that Microsoft and across other big tech companies. And it’s important to know, we’ve seen them use the same tactics last year and then this year when confronted about this complicity of just denying any allegations of trying to conceal what has been uncovered with direct data by workers at the company. And so they’re reusing again the same playbook to claim in a sense since they know this violates their own terms. I

Maximillian Alvarez:

Wanted to ask by way of rounding us out. I know I got to let you go here in a minute. A lot of people listening to this are like me going to be very scared hearing this. We live in very scary times. And I wanted to ask, as a former Microsoft employee, a tech worker, someone who knows how this technology works, do you have any advice for folks out there listening about how to keep themselves safe in this day and age, but also as an organizer, as a participant in the know Azure for Campaign, who is taking direct action to disrupt business as usual at Microsoft? Do you have any final messages to folks out there listening about what they can do to stop this and how they could get involved?

Ibtihal:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think as you pointed out, a lot of the surveillance technology that’s coming for us in North America is framed as “battle tested” in Palestine. That’s how these companies are selling this technology. And so when we organize and take action against these companies complicity in surveillance and apartheid and genocide in Palestine elsewhere, that is also organizing against this technology being used against us in the long run. So we need to not think of these issues as separate, just going to focus the issues that affect me domestically. And that’s a different segment of issues. Ultimately, the war machine is connected across continents. And so if we take a stab at it when it comes to Palestinian liberation, then we’re also taking a stab at it overall. And I think in terms of technology use, time has shown that big tech does not have our interests at heart.

Again, profit over people also means that as consumers, big tech will not look out for our privacy or our safety over the millions of dollars they can make off of selling our data. And so it’s important to de-Big-Tech-ify in a way, our life as much as possible and try to rely on alternatives, whether it be social media or productivity tools. We have alternatives out there. It is just become so ingrained that we could hopefully use Microsoft, Google, Meta products and we need to shift out of that mindset to essentially beside the BDS call and the boycott call, to also protect ourselves from these weapons manufacturers that disguise themselves as benevolent tech companies.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Tech Es. All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guest Ipal, a former software engineer at Microsoft and an organizer with the know Azure for Apartheid campaign. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network across our YouTube channel. Our podcast feeds our website and our social media pages, and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever, solidarity forever.