Microsoft ousts Israel chief after Azure used for military AI targeting
microsoft removed israel chief alon haimovich after finding that azure services powered mass surveillance and ai targeting for the idf in gaza.
following a guardian report, microsoft discovered unit 8200 used a segregated azure region in the netherlands to store petabytes of palestinian phone call data used for target identification. the company found israeli units violated terms by using ai services to aggregate surveillance data for airstrikes without ceo satya nadella's knowledge. microsoft subsequently disabled specific cloud and ai services for the defense ministry, though it previously denied its tech directly caused harm in gaza.