By Riffat Kausar
Snn News Finland
Pro-Palestinian activists disrupted a presentation by Amazon’s chief technology officer at a United Nations technology summit in Geneva, confronting him over the company’s role in a controversial cloud-computing contract with Israel known as Project Nimbus Protest.
The confrontation happened during the UN’s “AI for Good” summit, according to reports that pro-Palestine activists disrupted Amazon CTO Werner Vogels’ presentation at the event in Switzerland.
Vogels holds the title of Vice President and CTO at Amazon.
What is Project Nimbus?
Project Nimbus Protest is a joint contract between Google and Amazon, signed in 2021, to supply cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.
Amazon and Google won the deal in April 2021. Rights groups and tech workers have argued for years that the infrastructure could support Israeli military and surveillance operations, a claim both companies dispute.
How the protest unfolded
Demonstrators took the stage during Vogels’ appearance. Two protesters held up a sign reading “No Tech for Apartheid” while others in the audience chanted against the Nimbus contract.
One activist confronted Vogels directly about Amazon’s investment in the Project Nimbus Protest and the access it gives Israel to company servers, according to the New Arab.
The Project Nimbus Protest went further, linking Amazon’s technology to Israeli military systems reportedly used to identify targets in Gaza, including tools known as “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy.”
Amazon has not issued a new statement specific to this incident, but the company has previously said Project Nimbus Protest provides cloud services to government ministries and has rejected claims that it facilitates military operations.
Social media footage of the moment circulated widely, with online commentators describing the disruptors as engineers and calling for similar Project Nimbus Protest at other tech and political events.
These posts reflect public reaction rather than verified statements from the demonstrators themselves, and their claims have not been independently confirmed.
Key facts
- Location: UN “AI for Good” summit, Geneva, Switzerland
- Target: Amazon CTO and VP Werner Vogels
- Issue: Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Amazon-Google cloud contract with Israel signed in 2021
- Amazon’s position: services go to government ministries, not military operations
- Wider fallout: 28 Google employees fired in 2024 over related protests
- Project Nimbus Protest
FAQs:
What is Project Nimbus?
A cloud computing and AI services contract that Amazon and Google signed with the Israeli government in 2021.
Who did protesters confront?
Amazon Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels, during his appearance at a UN AI summit in Geneva.
Has Amazon commented on the military-use allegations?
Amazon has previously said Project Nimbus Protest Nimbus serves government ministries and has rejected claims it supports military operations.
Has this happened before with Project Nimbus?
Yes tech workers at both Amazon and Google have protested the contract since 2021, including sit-ins that led to firings at Google.
Broader context: years of internal dissent
Project Nimbus has faced repeated internal pushback from tech workers over several years.”
In 2021, employees from Amazon and Google wrote a public letter warning the technology could deepen discrimination against Palestinians, a letter initially signed by 300 Amazon employees and later by more than five times that number.
Google separately fired 28 employees following sit-in Project Nimbus Protest over the contract at its New York and Sunnyvale offices, after nine workers were arrested when the company called police.
Google has said Nimbus is not being used for weapons systems or intelligence gathering.
“Read more on how tech-worker dissent over the Nimbus contract has unfolded since 2021.”
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