The absolute legends from pro-Palestine campaign group Your Tech Their Deaths (YTTD) have disrupted a Dublin conference hosted by the disgraced Microsoft, a company that has operated as the tech backbone of so-called ‘Israel’s’ holocaust in Gaza.
The conference in question was Big Data Dublin 2026, held at the vomit-inducing address ‘One Microsoft Place’. In Ireland, we don’t just enable genocidaires, we now name streets after them. The blurb for the event says:
Join Microsoft and Analytics Engine for Big Data Dublin 2026, a flagship event bringing together Ireland’s leading organisations to explore how AI and data are being applied to drive real business impact.
Microsoft tech powering Zionist holocaust
Microsoft’s AI and data have certainly had an ‘impact’ on the people of Palestine. As +972 Magazinereported as far back as January 2025, Microsoft’s tech has been absolutely key to the ability of Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza. +972 said:
Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary.
Activists at YTTD rightly aren’t prepared to tolerate this corporate abomination operating freely in Ireland. As a Microsoft employee was giving a presentation, an activist interrupted proceedings while holding a Palestinian flag. She said:
One of the customers of Microsoft is the Israeli military. Microsoft uses their computing AI Azure to help Israeli military target and surveil Palestinians. Just like IBM was helping [the Nazis] to target the Jews, Microsoft is helping to target Palestinians in Palestine and Gaza. Microsoft is complicit with their cloud and their technology in killing Palestinians.
When a man asked her to stop, she replied: “Then you need to stop your contracts”. The activist urged Microsoft employees to join No Azure for Apartheid, as a second activist joined in. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform. +972 Magazinereported that:
[‘Israeli’] Army units revealed to be using services provided by Azure include the Air Force’s Ofek Unit, which is responsible for managing large databases of potential targets for lethal airstrikes (known as the “target bank”);
No Azure for Apartheid is a group comprised of Microsoft staff, who:
…demand that Microsoft live up to its own purported ethical values—by ending its direct and indirect complicity in Israeli apartheid and genocide.
Activists shut down tech-washing talk
The action was a success, causing a complete halt to the Microsoft presentation. Nearly all audience members left the room. The Canaryspoke to YTTD founder Jude Farrell, who suggested that maybe “they were embarrassed to be there in the first place”. When the talk restarted, other activists who had previously remained silent then disrupted proceedings once more.
Security present responded using their phones to record activists. Farrell noted this was:
…ironic considering Microsoft is currently being investigated for storing nearly 2 million hours of illegally surveilled audio of Palestinian phone calls in their Irish data centre. Data which was subsequently used to compile target lists and murder Palestinian men, women, and children.
Farrell added that:
Your Tech Their Deaths outright reject Microsoft Ireland issuing Azure licenses which are used to power israeli prisons where thousands of Palestinians are held hostage, tortured and raped.
The lower case ‘israeli’ is Farrell’s appropriate choice, given ‘Israel’ is an illegitimate pseudo-state.
Other complicit companies also hosted by Microsoft
Garda goons turned up towards the protest’s end, but did not make any arrests. Event organisers also helped to tech-wash fellow Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targets Dell and Axa. According to the BDS movement:
Dell Technologies supplies the servers, maintains services and related equipment to the Israeli military as a part of a $150 million 2023 contract funded by US foreign aid.
As for Axa, the company:
…holds $150.43 million – US$78.87 million in shares and US$71.56 million in bonds – in eleven companies that are arming Israel during its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including Boeing and General Dynamics.
The BDS movement urges boycotting of these vile companies, which are breaking international law by aiding crimes against humanity. We can all buy a computer from someone other than Dell. We can all get insurance from someone other than Axa.
The BDS movement’s particular focus for Microsoft is to ask customers to boycott its Xbox consoles and associated Game Pass service. Again, there are now countless ways to game which don’t fund a company assisting in mass murder.
And when Microsoft try to promote their genocidal tech at events, it’s up to all activists to follow Your Tech Their Deaths’ lead and ensure, in Farrell’s words:
There will be no business as usual while Microsoft profit from genocide.
Featured image via the Canary
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