Satya Nadella spoke about cooperation with the Pentagon

HoloLens 2. Photo: Microsoft

To date, more than 250 Microsoft employees have signed an open letter to Executive Director Satya Nadella and General Counsel Brad Smith with a demand to abandon the military contract with the US Army for the supply of augmented reality systems: “We are a global coalition of Microsoft employees and refuse to create technologies for war and oppression ", - the document begins with such words.

The action of the employees received a big response - and on February 25 the executive director himself spoke out on this issue. He defended the Microsoft contract for $ 479 million.

Satya Nadella mentioned that it is important to listen to the opinion of employees and to hold a civic stance, but companies will not “conceal technologies” from democratic governments: “We made a principled decision that we are not going to conceal technologies from institutions that we chose in democratic countries to protect the freedoms that we enjoy, ”said Microsoft's executive director in an exclusive interview with CNN Business at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona.
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“We were very transparent with regard to this decision, and we will continue this dialogue [with the staff],” he added.

Microsoft received a contract from the Pentagon to supply prototypes of the “Integrated Augmented Reality System” (IVAS) in November 2018. Under contract, the company can supply up to 100,000 VR helmets in the end.

Microsoft's HoloLens Augmented Reality technology allows you to see the world around you with the overlay of virtual graphics. The Israeli military, who received HoloLens at their disposal, have already built systems that help commanders visualize the battlefield, and the field doctors have to consult with doctors.

According to the tender documents, the US military plans to create a single platform that provides "increased mortality, mobility and situational awareness" in battle.

In an open letter, Microsoft employees oppose the contract: "The use of HoloLens in the IVAS system should help train people to kill," the letter says. “It will be deployed on the battlefield and works, turning the war into a simulated video game, further alienating the soldiers from the dark consequences of the war and the reality of bloodshed.”

Employees formulated in the letter three requirements:

1. Cancel the IVAS contract.
   
2. Stop the development of any weapon technology and develop a public policy of acceptable use explaining this commitment.
   
3. To appoint an independent external ethics board authorized to ensure and publicly confirm compliance with the policy of acceptable use.

However, the director is adamant. “It’s not about arbitrariness on the part of the company, it’s not about 50 or 100 people or even 100,000 people in a company,” he said. “It’s about being a responsible corporate citizen in a democracy.”

Last year, General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in the official blog that the company will help employees who do not want to work on specific projects, go to other teams. But he said that the company will continue the "many years of support" of the US Department of Defense. “All of us who live in this country depend on her strong defense,” he wrote in a blog post.

It should be noted that the protest of Microsoft employees resembles a similar action of Google employees , which ended in success. In this case, the programmers also noticed that they didn’t develop technologies for the army at all and it’s unpleasant for them to hear that the employer decided to earn money from their work in such an inhuman way. In March 2017, Google entered into a contract with the US Department of Defense. As part of the Maven project, by the end of 2017, it was planned to “introduce advanced computer algorithms into government platforms for recognizing objects on a large number of moving or still images”. In fact, this is a machine vision system for military UAVs. Several thousand Google employees signed an open letter against the use of their developments for military purposes. There was a noise in the press. As a result, the company had to abandon the lucrative contract, which will now go to another contractor.