Microsoft employees call on company to kill $480 million U.S. Army contract
A group of Microsoft employees today called on the company to cancel a $480 million contract information technology recently inked with the U.S. Army. In an open up letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith, the employees stated that they "refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression" (via Recode)
The contract in question could see the Army buy upwardly of 100,000 HoloLens headsets for combat and training purposes. When the contract was appear last November, information technology was described as a program to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide, and engage before the enemy" using HoloLens tech. It's precisely this intention that the employees have objected to.
"The application of HoloLens within the [Integrated Visual Augmentation System] is designed to help people kill," the letter states. "It volition exist deployed on the battlefield, and works past turning warfare into a fake "video game," further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed."
To address their concerns, the employees call on Microsoft to cancel the contract, cease developing "any and all weapons technologies," typhoon a public-facing policy on the commitment, and appoint an contained ethics review board to assess the company'southward compliance with such a policy.
The letter also calls attending to what the employees see as a larger problem within Microsoft; namely, employees aren't "properly informed of the use of their work," the letter says. This, the employees fence, makes information technology difficult for employees to be informed enough to brand the decision to motility to some other projection – an option Microsoft President Brad Smith has indicated is open to employees who may have ethical objections to how their work is existence used.
It'southward unclear how many Microsoft employees have signed onto the letter so far, simply Recode reports that the grouping numbered around fifty equally of 5 p.1000. ET on February 22.
This is the latest in a string of movements past employees in the tech manufacture against projects their employers are working on. For Microsoft, the letter is reminiscent of the backlash Microsoft faced from employees last June over its piece of work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during amidst the controversy surrounding U.S.-United mexican states border crunch. Those outcries didn't impact Microsoft'south work with Water ice, but elsewhere in the tech industry, Google employees were successful in pushing the company to carelessness an AI contract with the Pentagon and end work on a censored search production for People's republic of china.
The letter likewise comes alee of Microsoft'southward February 24 Mobile Globe Congress 2022 effect, where it's expected to take the wraps off of HoloLens 2.
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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-employees-call-company-kill-480-million-us-army-contract
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