'We did not sign up to develop weapons': Microsoft workers protest $480m HoloLens military deal
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Dozens of Microsoft employees have signed a letter protesting the company’s $480 million contract to supply the U.S. Army with augmented-reality headsets intended for use on the battlefield.
Under the terms of the deal, the headsets, which place holographic images into the wearer’s field of vision, would be adapted to “increase lethality” by “enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy,” according to a government description of the project. Microsoft was awarded the contract in November .
“We are a global coalition of Microsoft workers, and we refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression,” the employees state in the letter, which was published on an internal message board and circulated via email to employees at the company Friday. More than 100 Microsoft employees signed their names to the letter. Microsoft employs almost 135,000 people worldwide .
“We are alarmed that Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the US 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 said.
Members of a design team at Cirque du Soleil demonstrate use of Microsoft's HoloLens device in helping to virtually design a set at the Microsoft Build 2017 developers conference in Seattle on May 11, 2017. Elaine Thompson / AP file The letter , addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and president and chief legal officer Brad Smith, notes that the company has previously licensed technology to the military — including HoloLens for use in training — but has never before “crossed the line into weapons development.”
It adds that the program, officially called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, turns “warfare into a simulated ‘video game,’ further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed.”
The signatories demand that Microsoft cancel the IVAS contract, cease to develop weapons technology and draft an acceptable use policy publicly clarifying those commitments. They also demand an independent ethics review board to ensure compliance with this policy.
The open letter comes days before Microsoft is expected to unveil HoloLens 2 , an upgraded version of its augmented-reality headset, at an event Sunday at Mobile World Congress, an annual technology conference in Barcelona, Spain.
“A lot of people feel uncomfortable about being involved in war-related business or producing weapons that hurt other people,” one Microsoft employee, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told NBC News. “To me, it’s a basic violation of Microsoft’s mission statement to empower every person and organization on the planet to do more.”
“Although I believe in security and military action for a morally justifiable cause, I take issue with the language of ‘lethality,’” software developer Monte Michaelis added. Michaelis worked on HoloLens for two years but left Microsoft in 2018 to join New York City-based content agency Arkadium. “There are appropriate applications for mixed reality in a military setting, but I would not want to be designing an experience where my goal was to more efficiently kill people.”
This is not the first time that Microsoft employees have criticized the company’s cooperation with the military and law enforcement. In June last year, more than 100 employees protested the technology company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and demanded it stop working with the agency, which had been separating migrant children from their parents at the United States-Mexico border.
“We gave this issue careful consideration and outlined our perspective in an October 2018 blog . We always appreciate feedback from employees and provide many avenues for their voices to be heard. In fact, we heard from many employees throughout the fall," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email. "As we said then, we’re committed to providing our technology to the U.S. Department of Defense, which includes the U.S. Army under this contract. As we’ve also said, we’ll remain engaged as an active corporate citizen in addressing the important ethical and public policy issues relating to AI and the military.”
In October last year, employees published a letter calling on executives to withdraw a proposed bid for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a $10 billion project to build cloud services for artificial intelligence to be used by the military.
Later that month, Smith wrote in a blog post that the company would continue to sell technologies, including artificial intelligence and augmented reality, to the military.
“We can’t expect these new developments to be addressed wisely if the people in the tech sector who know the most about technology withdraw from the conversation,” he said.
Smith added that employees who did not want to work on a project for ethical or other reasons could move into a different role within the company.
The signatories to this week’s open letter said that this offer ignores the fact that “workers are not properly informed of the use of the work.”
“There are many engineers who contributed to HoloLens before this contract even existed, believing it would be used to help architects and engineers build buildings and cars, to help teach people how to perform surgery or play the piano, to push the boundaries of gaming, and to connect with the Mars Rover.”
“These engineers have now lost their ability to make decisions about what they work on, instead finding themselves implicated as war profiteers.”
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I'm glad this generation wasn't around during WWII or we'd all be speaking German.
They had them back then, too, but it was more about appeasement. But I have to agree with you.
This happened on the Manhattan project also. Slizard literally developed the idea of a chain reaction and helped build the first reactor.
and then he participated in a petition to Truman to not use the bomb(s).
Horse fritters! Even the Manhattan project had people that were concerned with the development and use of the bomb. Care to explain Alvin York in WWI?
People of conscious have always been with us, and offer the country a valuable subjective counterweight to the "shoot first, ask questions later" types.
BS generalization there are plenty of kids of this generation currently serving and doing their duty in the military and plenty more that would do so if required.
Additionally if this generation was around during WWII they would have been raised with the prevailing norms and mores of that time and have turned out different as a result
"….the last few decades it's seems to be going to the other way."
Your comment is strange in that it echo's the sentiments of all of my German neighbors and co-workers that see many parallels to 1930 Germany in the America of today.
My mistake. Of course VR headsets are equivalent to atomic weapons...
Lol.
We are lucky that these folks grew up in a time of relative stability where their refusal to help their nation will have minimal impact.
By the design of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, Americans tend to be somewhat a scattered lot, all going off in the own directions, and in their own way. That is until we are pushed into a corner. Pearl Harbor, and 9-11 were galvanizing moments for our people, and there will be more.
WWII destroyed forever the idea of total war and conquering your enemy and destroying nations by building empires......
No matter how WWII turned out we would not be speaking German any more than we would be Japanese.....
The Japanese in fact went into it knowing that they could not possibly win a prolonged war against us and the Germans? Initial success fueled a lot of pure insanity there....
Pearl Harbor? afterwards there were no more isolationists, everyone became an America Firster with a huge motivational act in our recent past.... Of all the major nations we had the weakest army around and the navy although numerically powerful was still fighting and planning the battleship wars.... 3 years and eight months later we had the most powerful military on the planet and we really hadn't started full scale power projection.
All 9/11 established for those who understand the history of our nation, that the America First ideal is still right below the surface, waiting for anyone stupid enough to try..... (heck even the Russians got the hell outta the way)
I see a lot of parallels to 1930's Germany in our society, My only difference with many, is the direction it is coming from.
And unfortunately, there are many that still to this day, have yet to learn that lesson..... (that lesson also applies to the Russians and Mother Russia, or the Chinese and China, for those that think I don't see clearly)
The age of imperialism is long over.... (even in it's modern form, nation building)
"Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" -- J Robert Oppenheimer, Nuclear physicist, Director of the the Manhattan project quoting the Bhagavad-Gita when asked about his thoughts on what he created.....
In the video below, when it gets to Oppenheimer, have you ever seen such a sad face on anyone? that was his reaction when being asked about his legacy....
I would say they were all greatly disturbed by their creation/accomplishment. They thought they were producing an unending power source for all mankind, they lost sight of the the basic nature of Man....
Unintentional consequences indeed.....
Which I think is good. There always has to be a ying to a yang. Good to evil. This is a very valid point.
The sad thing is, we really didn't have a choice. If we didn't get the bomb first, surely the Germans would have. The outcome would have probably looked a whole lot more like "The man in the High Castle".
Yet, who would want this on their conscience? It is a heavy burden to bear.
Imagine having to be Truman.... thrust all too quickly into learning about the bomb, then having to make the final decision to make us of it.......
I think that Truman wanted to use the bomb to see how it really responded in the field. Of course, I don't think he wanted to do it twice.
The Japanese have a very funny way of treating that in their history books.
Example:
from one of the U.S. textbooks:
Compare this with an excerpt from a Japanese text, also explaining the dropping of the bombs but in much less detail:
Good article to read about this:
Actually Truman's decision on use of the Bomb was if we have them, we should use them....
Which is a blanket approval, it was up to the military when and where.... When asked about in after the war on multiple occasions he said exactly that, he had no qualms at all..... We had them, we used them, it saved lives.....
And it is hard to argue with that logic. They were estimating over a million casualties in the invasion of Japan proper. (just the invasion portion of the battle 2 millions to conquer the nation) The cabinet considered 100 to 150 thousand dead a small price to pay..... (they only had two bombs but were making more, next expected delivery to Tinian was in January '46)
Also, the threat of annihilation of major cities was made a week ahead of time, the Japanese rejected this out of hand. After Hiroshima, they called in Dr. Yoshio Nishina , a close associate of Niels Bohr and a contemporary of Albert Einstein to inspect the area around Hiroshima and report back if he felt the claims of the Americans were true . That they did have a working Atomic Bomb and were capable of wiping out Japanese cities at will. In the process of his study he determined that it was indeed a nuclear device along the ideals of what he himself had proposed five years earlier. The day after his report reached the Premier, the Nagasaki bomb was dropped..... Nishina made a direct appeal to the emperor that indeed it was, and that they had no defense. Also, that we were quite capable of doing the one bomb, one city tour as we had warned them. (of course they had no idea of how many we actually had or of how difficult the manufacturing process was, so their fears were absolutely justified)
The Emperor called an imperial conference and inquired of the government about it and then ordered them to come to a resolution. Four days later he ordered them to surrender....
Those employees have the opportunity to take their Microsoft experiences ( and stock benefits) and find another position with a competitor
or seek counseling; maybe they can find a new line of work in line with their personal ideologies.
I'm assuming that GM and Chrysler employees have had an equal opportunity over the years to find alternate careers rather than participate in making
the Abrams series of battle tanks ( since 1978 ) or any of the Hummers or other parts that go into standard military vehicles.
And if you think about it using the same "reasoning", every single tax payer is guilty of particioating in war profiteering, by financing it.
Be gone then!
If they are going to use this technology in combat settings it is going to put a whole new meaning to the "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. ."
Is it ethical to tell developers that they are to develop products to enhance lives and then use those products to kill men, women and children instead?
That is an excellent ethics question. It has been going on for since the last century. In the past, when you signed on at a company like Microsoft, they own everything you designed and this was an excepted practice. I am not sure if this is still the case. If it is, they knew what they were getting themselves into. If it isn't then you are right.
From the Article.....
This is actually considered a very liberal stance for a corporation. Most would expect that they are not only paying you for your time, they are paying you for your skill, experience and expertise in the field you are working...... And consequently if you do not want to use what they are paying you for to produce the product they make then find another job......
It makes no matter to the company who the customer is......
I suspect the wages and benefits are well above what they would receive from most other companies so they find a way to justify continuing to work for them....
A personal choice as I see it.... Income above ethos....
They don't HAVE to work there and from what I hear there are companies all over the area that would be ecstatic to get a former Microsoft tech to work for them.... They just can't afford to pay them what Microsoft pays....
So I guess they will choose to go on war mongering for the bucks.....
I wonder how they feel about Windows being the predominant software the military uses for most of it's computers.... What about Russia and their military, the same situation, Iran? North Korea?
All of them use windows......
Any place they work for Microsoft they are supporting the worlds military in some fashion
How bout those ethics?
It does seem that morals have become highly detrimental if one is to be financially successful in today's world.
I have found that Morals are very relative.....
Relative to the status one wishes in the society they live in......
It is a reflection of the morals of the society that they are living in.
Yes. Subjugation.
I agree. But so does going against your own conscience and ethics. Some people have a more flexible conscience than others. Some people are completely void of a conscience. We label them as psychopaths, sociopaths and perhaps even narcissists.
For me the question is - Is it ethical that people are lied to and/or coerced to develop weapons to kill others for any reason?
This is a fairly small minority of employees that most likely have open lettered themselves out of a job. I can't find a lot of pity for them. Microsoft is in fact a large military contractor for software in the U.S. and other countries.
It’s probably just inevitable that such technology would eventually end up on the battlefield. Similarly, there are countless innocent and practical uses for drone technology ... and then there’s the predator.
What entitlement! No, you do not get a say.
"Dozens of Microsoft employees have signed a letter protesting the company’s $480 million contract to supply the U.S. Army with augmented-reality headsets intended for use on the battlefield."
480 million versus "dozens"... I think we know how this ends.
I honestly don't think this is going anywhere.