Posted on 02/24/2019 12:37:14 PM PST by lowbridge
More than 150 Microsoft employees signed a letter demanding the tech giant cancel a $480 million contract to build a HoloLens for the Pentagon, saying they "refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression."
"We are alarmed that Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the U.S. military, helping one country's government 'increase lethality' using tools we built. We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used," the letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith, which was posted to Twitter, states.
The employees represent the latest big tech backlash, coming from within Silicon Valley itself, as workers demand more of a say over how tech products are used and how a range of groups are treated internally.
Back in November, according to the Microsoft employees, the company awarded a major contractto the U.S. Army with the stated objective to "rapidly develop, test, and manufacture a single platform that soldiers can use to fight, rehearse, and train that provides increased lethality, mobility, and situational awareness necessary to achieve overmatch against our current and future adversaries."
The workers demand that Microsoft cancel the contract, cease developing any and all weapons technologies, draft a public-facing policy around the acceptable use of such technology, and appoint an independent, external ethics review board with the power to enforce compliance.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I wonder what their families in China think?
More probable...
That's the real point of this exercise. If MS decides they want something they wont hesitate a fraction of a second to roll right over these schlubs.
I’ll do it.
Fire them.
Of possible interest...
Are you going to charge more or less than $480 million?
Fire or suspend the 150 who refuse to do what they have been assigned to do. This is an employer-employee relationship.
The funny part is that these people support a socialist
state which if they achieved their goal would NOT allow
them to protest at all.
Can’t say that I blame them. Government is not doing it’s job because there are too many jobs for them to do.
They should create a “Microsoft Defense Division” with a “Chinese Wall” walling it off from the rest of the company and move willing employees into it. It’s probably a highly compartmentalized project anyway.
Tell those “resistors” they are free to leave the company any time if they don’t like the work they were assigned.
The company would be smart to realize that these employees aren’t needed.
Yeah, much better idea to outsource military suff to the PLA ...
“More than 150 Microsoft employees signed a letter demanding the tech giant cancel a $480 million contract to build a HoloLens for the Pentagon, saying they “refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression.””
A good rule of thumb: What would Reagan do if he were CEO?
(I think he would can them and toss their personal belongings out on the sidewalk.)
You idiots will never get to work at Area 51 with attitudes like that.
That's an excellent point. In 1976, I went to China to help build new natural-gas fertilizer plants. My interpreter, Mr. Shen, was an amazing concert violinist. The STATE decided they already had enough of those and told him "You're an interpreter. Forget about every playing that violin." The STATE made all the decisions for you.
I was actually kidding, but the whole situation is not really that funny. And it is not Chinese fault.
Assign them to maintenance on Microsoft Bob.
If they refuse then seize ALL MicroSoft assets and give it to an American company that will.
No more pussyfooting with treasonous leftist.
Place the order with Huawei. They have business ahead of politics and not near that much infested with leftists as Microsoft is.
If these are the same goofs that developed Office365, fire them all.
I see layoffs in Microsoft’s future.
To work on military projects like this I would think you need a security clearance. FBI is they are able to, god knows they can’t do anything right, get a copy of the letter and revoke the security clearance of all the signees. No clearance no work. Better yet they will never get another security clearance in the future. Well for the next 6 years.;
The connection between Demo-Socialist-Progressives and
straight up Communism is rarely noted.
Study the starvation going on now in North Korea.
Then google Tienenmen Square to read about the end results of Socialism and it’s ‘tactics of negotiation’.
Then look up Holodomor; The Soviet Ukraine Famine of 1932-33, where somewhere between 2 and 10 MILLION people died of government imposed starvation. There is much, much more.
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