Employees at Microsoft on Friday demanded that the company cancel a contract to supply its augmented-reality headsets to the U.S. Army, warning in a letter that putting HoloLens in the military’s hands could “help people kill.”
Writing to chief executive Satya Nadella, more than 50 workers said the devices would be “turning warfare into a simulated ‘video game.’” They also urged Microsoft, which won the $480 million contract in November, to “cease developing any and all weapons technologies” for the government.
“As employees and shareholders we do not want to become war profiteers,” the letter concluded. “To that end, we believe that Microsoft must stop in its activities to empower the U.S. Army's ability to cause harm and violence.”
A Microsoft spokesman said, “We always appreciate feedback from employees and have many avenues for employee voices to be heard.” The Army did not respond to a request for comment.
A Microsoft employee who helped draft the letter — speaking on the condition of anonymity out of concerns about retribution — shared a copy with The Washington Post and verified that the co-signers work at the company.
The internal revolt at Microsoft highlights the heightened activism among employees at tech giants and follows similar uprisings at Amazon and Google, where workers have bristled over their companies’ business relationships with the U.S. military or law enforcement agencies. Google, for example, opted last year against renewing one of its contracts with the Pentagon — a partnership to develop image-recognition tools for drones — because employees felt that the tech giant shouldn’t be in the “business of war,” they said at the time.
Like its peers, Microsoft has struggled to balance its relationship with the Defense Department against its employees’ ethical and policy qualms about working with the U.S. government
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