Dozens of Google employees held sit-ins Tuesday at the tech giant's New York City and Sunnyvale, Calif., offices to protest the company's work with Israel. Google and Amazon have a cloud computing and artificial intelligence contract with the Israeli government and military, a deal known as Project Nimbus that is worth $1.2 billion. The employees participating in the sit-ins wore shirts that said 'Drop Project Nimbus' and a banner was hung that read, 'No tech for genocide.
“As a Software Engineer in Google Cloud, it is horrifying to think that the code I write could be used by the Israeli Military in the first ever AI powered genocide,' said Google Cloud software engineer William Van Der Laar from Sunnyvale in a statement. 'We did not come to Google to work on technology that kills. By engaging in this contract leadership has betrayed our trust, our AI Principles, and our humanity.' A spokesperson for Google, based in Mountain View, Calif.