Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad protests the company’s AI sales to Israel, fearing her code may be used in deadly attacks on children in Gaza.
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| Microsoft employee breaks silence over AI use in Gaza bombings, saying fear of contributing to child deaths outweighs fear of job loss. Image: CH |
Redmond, USA — April 6, 2025:
A Microsoft employee has gone public with her fears that her work is being used to facilitate deadly attacks on civilians in Gaza, disrupting the company’s 50th-anniversary event to protest its sales of artificial intelligence tools to the Israeli military.
Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer at the tech giant’s Redmond headquarters, stood up during the celebration and condemned the company’s involvement in what she described as war crimes. “We cannot be celebrating while people in Palestine are getting murdered thanks to Microsoft,” she told local media following her protest.
Aboussad said she fully expects consequences for her actions, but that her overriding fear is the potential role her work may be playing in military operations. “My biggest concern right now is knowing that our code is contributing to bombing, surveillance, and targeting of innocents,” she said.
“For me, my biggest fear is waking up for my 9-5 and realising that my code might be killing children today,” she added. “That’s why I spoke out, despite the risk. The fear of contributing to the genocide in Gaza is greater for me.”
Microsoft has not publicly commented on the protest. However, the demonstration comes amid growing unrest within the tech sector, where employees are increasingly challenging their companies’ involvement in military and surveillance programs, particularly those linked to active conflict zones.
Human rights groups have warned that AI technologies, when applied to warfare, can accelerate the scale and precision of violence, raising ethical and legal concerns about corporate responsibility. While Microsoft has maintained that its AI deployments adhere to ethical guidelines, Aboussad’s protest highlights an internal reckoning over how those principles are applied in real-world scenarios.
The situation in Gaza continues to draw international condemnation, with mounting civilian casualties and reports of children among the dead. The employee’s protest underscores a widening gap between corporate AI initiatives and their human impact on the ground.