Ariel Koren, a Google employee who became the face of workers’ protests against the company’s contract with the Israeli government announced her resignation yesterday. The Jewish marketing manager says she faced retaliation from management and some colleagues for expressing pro-Palestinian views within the company. In October, she joined other Google and Amazon employees who publicly oppose Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract for Google and Amazon to provide cloud computing to Israel, including the Defense Ministry. She says Google later gave her an ultimatum: agree to move to Brazil within 17 days or lose her job.
Training docs leaked to the Intercept show Project Nimbus giving Israel access to Google’s cloud AI services, including face and expression detection, video analytics and sentiment analysis. Koren and others were concerned that the technology would be used against Palestinians living in occupied territories and launched a campaign called No Tech for Apartheid. Despite previous employee protests over defense contracts, Google has recently expanded its defense operations.
On Wednesday, Koren, along with other current and former Google employees and Palestinian human rights activists, spoke outside one of the company’s San Francisco offices to protest Project Nimbus. Employees of both Google and Amazon plan to protest at corporate offices in San Francisco, New York and Seattle next month.
Google did not respond to detailed questions, but spokesperson Shannon Newberry wrote in a statement that the company has investigated Koren’s allegation and has found no retaliation. The US National Labor Relations Board dismissed Koren’s case for retaliation. Newberry said Google’s cloud contract with Israel “doesn’t target highly sensitive or classified workloads.”
Koren spoke to WIRED about what it’s like to become an outspoken critic within Google, which has previously fired employees who have condemned the company’s business practices and AI projects. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: When did you decide to organize with colleagues to pressure Google management?
Ariel Koren: In the summer of 2020. The Jewglers Jewish staff group, of which I was a member, received an email from Google formally apologizing for their donation to Black Lives Matter. The group’s leadership had complained that this was inherently anti-Semitic because the Movement for Black Lives coalition includes organizations that have indicated their affiliation with the Palestinian human rights movement.
We were outraged to see the company apologize for donating to the coalition fighting anti-black racism and violence in the US. We organized a letter from Jewish people in the company calling on the leadership to withdraw their apology. Instead of acknowledging our letter, Google donated to groups chosen by Jewglers leadership. For us, this was an armament of false stories of anti-Semitism. At that point, we knew we had to take a stand.
How did that lead to protests over the Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli government?
Google has not provided any transparency to its shareholders, the general public or its own staff about what this contract entails. We learned about it through the media and by talking to each other. The contract was announced in 2021, during [an outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestine]. It would be concerning to see an AI or surveillance contract of this magnitude at any time, with any military. It made matters worse that Google announced this in the midst of the Gaza siege.
