Microsoft workers want the company to drop its U.S Army contract

Microsoft employees have taken to Twitter, calling for the tech giant to cancel its U.S Army contract that it won last year. They posted a letter addressed to the company CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith. They believe the deal has crossed a line and declared that they did not sign up to develop weapons.

Late in November last year, we covered a $480 million lucrative security deal between Microsoft and the U.S Army. Microsoft won the U.S Military contract that centered on the former providing the latter with around 100,000 military grade HoloLens headsets. The contract had attracted some resentment from the employees from the beginning. But now, workers have decided to organize their protest. Their petition on twitter said: “While the company has previously licensed the tech to the US Military, it has never crossed the line into weapons development. With this contract it does.” The petition had three key demands in the petition. Its main demand is that the company cancels the contract with the military.

In a similar incident last year, Alphabet Inc had announced that it would not be renewing a Pentagon contract following a worker pushback. But Microsoft was fairly diplomatic when it retorted to its own worker pushback. Microsoft said that they “appreciate feedback from employees” in response to the statement.