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Microsoft
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Software and cloud company behind Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure and LinkedIn. Website ↗
Documented facts (6)
- Oct 2025Authoritarian alignment
Listed by the White House among the donors funding President Donald Trump's ballroom. Individual amounts were not disclosed. The Washington Post later reported that Microsoft made a contribution in the millions of dollars.
Response: Microsoft declined to comment on the Washington Post report.
- 6 Aug 2025Surveillance & deportation
A joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call reported that Israel's military intelligence Unit 8200 stored recordings of millions of intercepted phone calls of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank on Microsoft's Azure cloud, with Microsoft engineers working with the unit on the infrastructure. In September 2025 Microsoft said its review had found "evidence that supports elements" of the reporting and disabled the services concerned.
Response: Microsoft initially said it had "no information" about the data stored and was not aware of surveillance of civilians. Brad Smith later wrote: "We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians."
The report "From economy of occupation to economy of genocide" (A/HRC/59/23) by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, which describes Israel's campaign in Gaza as genocide, names Microsoft among the companies giving Israel near government-wide access to cloud and AI technologies. It states that when the Israeli military's internal cloud overloaded in October 2023, Microsoft, with its Azure platform, and the Project Nimbus consortium stepped in with critical cloud and AI infrastructure, and that Microsoft has integrated its systems across the Israeli military since 2003.
“Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing, decision-making and surveillance and analysis capacities.”
Response: On 15 May 2025 Microsoft said: "we have found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people" in the Gaza conflict. On 25 September 2025, after reporting by The Guardian, it said it had "ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD)". Israel called the report politically motivated and legally baseless.
The Associated Press reported in May 2025 that Microsoft had cancelled, according to ICC staffers, the email address of International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan after President Trump sanctioned him by executive order. A Microsoft spokesperson later referred to "the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services".
Response: Microsoft said that "at no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC". Brad Smith said Microsoft's actions "did not in any way involve the cessation of services to the ICC".
- 9 Jan 2025Authoritarian alignment
Announced a $1 million donation to Donald Trump's 2025 inaugural fund, up from $500,000 to each of the 2017 and 2021 inaugurations. The inaugural committee reported to the Federal Election Commission receiving $750,000 from Microsoft, while Microsoft told Congress it gave $1 million in two installments.
- Jan 2018Surveillance & deportation
Promoted in a January 2018 blog post its Azure Government cloud work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying it met the standards to handle ICE's "most sensitive unclassified data" and let employees "utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification". The section was briefly deleted and then restored in June 2018, as the family separation policy at the border drew criticism.
Response: Microsoft said an employee had briefly deleted the section by mistake after seeing social media commentary. It said it was "dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border" and that it did not believe ICE was using its services for anything to do with separating families.
Relations
- Microsoft is led by Satya Nadella · Wikipedia
- Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates (until 2020) · WikipediaMicrosoft News
- Microsoft is founded by Paul Allen (until 2000) · WikipediaWikipedia
- GitHub is subsidiary of Microsoft
- LinkedIn is subsidiary of Microsoft
- Mistral AI is backed by Microsoft
- OpenAI is backed by Microsoft