Activists and supporters of the Palestinian cause stormed the stage of a tech event featuring former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, raising Palestinian flags and chanting slogans condemning Big Tech's complicity and profiteering from the ongoing war and genocide in the Gaza Strip.
In details of the event, a group of activists interrupted the event, which Schmidt, one of Silicon Valley's most prominent figures and a Google co-founder, was scheduled to attend. They raised Palestinian banners and flags and chanted slogans denouncing the role played by major tech companies in supporting the Israeli war machine.
The protest aimed to highlight the silent complicity of Big Tech companies, sending a clear message that financial profits and huge contracts cannot absolve them of participation in the genocide and destruction unfolding in Gaza.
The protest comes within an ongoing global campaign to boycott tech companies, particularly Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, over contracts signed with the Israeli occupation, most notably the Nimbus cloud project, which provides artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies to the Israeli military.
Activists believe these technologies are used directly or indirectly in targeting civilians and facilitating military operations.
Participants at the event raised slogans stressing that "silence is not an option," demanding that tech workers and scientists refuse to work on projects serving crimes of genocide, and affirming that technology should serve humanity, not develop tools of killing and surveillance.
