Exclusion: Microsoft

White Brook believes

1. Microsoft aggressively sought business with the Israeli Defense Force — filling the gap left by Amazon and Google, who used terms-of-service clauses to prohibit IDF activities on their clouds. Microsoft aggressively used this opening to win business.
2. Microsoft suppressed dissent amongst its employees who protested its activities and created lasting damage to their careers and livelihood by reporting internal dissenting opinions to the FBI.

We find Microsoft's company statements denying the reporting disingenuous and intentionally misleading and believe they took an amoral stance to the IDF's war crimes.

Update

On September 25, 2025 Microsoft admitted it had supplied services to the IDF as contemplated in news articles and previously denied. It stated that services have been discontinued.

White Brook believes:

• The conclusions relayed on the company blog post continue to be disingenuous.
• It is unlikely that their technologies' specific uses were unknown to:
  • the Microsoft-employed sellers of the technology,
  • the managers of those sellers,
  • the compliance personnel overseeing that vertical,
  • the compliance personnel overseeing the exposure to the wider company,
  • multiple people of various rank within the finance division responsible for collecting and forecasting receivables,
  • the engineering team that implemented and troubleshot implementation issues,
  • the leadership team,
  • the C-suite,
  • and the Board of Directors.

We continue to exclude Microsoft from the Index.

Pertinent Sources

1. Microsoft Company Blog

blogs.microsoft.com — Statement on technology and the Israel-Gaza conflict

Summary: Microsoft denies IDF using Azure or AI to target Gazans. Revised on August 15, 2025 to indicate the hire of outside counsel.

"Based on these reviews, including interviewing dozens of employees and assessing documents, we have found no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza…"

"Microsoft works with countries and customers around the world, including the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD). Microsoft provides IMOD with software, professional services, Azure cloud services, and Azure AI services, including language translation. As with many governments around the world, we also work with the Israeli government to protect its national cyberspace against external threats."

Updated on August 15, 2025 to indicate that outside counsel is reviewing company activities.

Microsoft update — September 25, 2025

2. The Guardian

theguardian.com — Microsoft, Israeli military and Palestinian phone calls on the cloud

Summary: CEO Satya Nadella supported the IDF's surveillance agency, Unit 8200's use of a customized and segregated area within Azure. Unit 8200 uses it to record millions of Gazan phone calls in Gaza and the West Bank.

"Microsoft claims Nadella was unaware of what kind of data Unit 8200 planned to store in Azure. But a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and Israeli military intelligence reveals how Azure has been used by Unit 8200 to store this expansive archive of everyday Palestinian communications."

3. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

business-humanrights.org — Report exposes Microsoft deepening ties with Israeli military

Summary: Microsoft deepened ties with the Israeli military specifically for the Gazan offensive.

"Revealed: Microsoft deepened ties with Israeli military to provide tech support during Gaza war" — 23 January 2025

"The Israeli military's reliance on Microsoft's cloud technology and artificial intelligence systems surged during the most intensive phase of its bombardment of Gaza, leaked documents reveal."

"The files offer an inside view of how Microsoft deepened its relationship with Israel's defence establishment after 7 October 2023, supplying the military with greater computing and storage services and striking at least $10m in deals to provide thousands of hours of technical support."

"While the IDF has used some Microsoft services for administrative purposes, such as email and file management systems, documents and interviews suggest Azure has been used to support combat and intelligence activities."

"As a trusted partner of Israel's defence ministry, Microsoft was frequently tasked with working on sensitive and highly classified projects. Its staff also worked closely with the IDF's intelligence directorate, including its elite surveillance division, Unit 8200."

"In recent years, documents show, Microsoft has also provided the Israeli military with large-scale access to OpenAI's GPT-4 model — the engine behind ChatGPT — thanks to a partnership with the developer of the AI tools which recently changed its policies against working with military and intelligence clients."

business-humanrights.org — Microsoft allegedly asked FBI to track Gaza protests by employees

Summary: Company officials reported a former employee to the FBI — an action that has implications for his career and everyday life — for posting arguments that Microsoft was complicit in genocide.

"'One of our former employees in particular, [redacted by WBC], has been quite active in his posts targeting Microsoft and that we are complicit in genocide,' a Microsoft director of investigations wrote the FBI in an email seen by Bloomberg. The company had identified a handful of employees involved in the demonstrations, including one of their young adult children, he added."