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I’VE WORKED AT GOOGLE FOR DECADES. I’M SICKENED BY WHAT IT’S
DOING.  
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Emma Jackson
April 16, 2025
The Nation
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_ For the first time, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our
company is now powering state violence across the globe. _

A protest outside Google’s offices in San Francisco, Thursday,
December 14, 2023., Santiago Mejia / San Francisco Chronicle via AP

 

This article appears in the June 2025 issue
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with the headline “Google’s Wars,”

When I joined Google, over 20 years ago, it was just a start-up
employing a few thousand people. It felt like we were committed to
making something useful for society. When I first visited the Mountain
View headquarters and saw people in Google-branded T-shirts, I thought
the company must make engineers wear a uniform—why else would
someone wear a shirt announcing where they work? I’d never seen or
experienced this sense of passion for one’s employer, but I soon saw
why: Every few months, a new product or feature would launch that
offered a free and truly useful service (Gmail! Google Maps!).

But if my overwhelming feeling back then was pride, my feeling now is
a very different one: heartbreak. That’s thanks to years of deeply
troubling leadership decisions, from Google’s initial foray into
military contracting with Project Maven, to the corporation’s more
recent profit-driven partnerships like Project Nimbus
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Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing
contract with the Israeli military that has powered Israel’s ongoing
genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Today marks one year since workers with No Tech for Apartheid
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Google offices to protest the use of our labor to power the genocide
in Gaza, to demand an end the harassment
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our Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab coworkers, and to pressure
executives to address the workplace health and safety crisis that
Nimbus has caused. Google retaliated against workers and illegally
fired 50 Googlers
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many who did not participate directly in the action.

In the year since, Google has only deepened its commitment to being a
military contractor. Two months ago, in order to take advantage of the
federal contracts the corporation can gain under Trump,
Google abandoned
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pledge not to build AI for weapons or surveillance. In rapid
succession, Google then acquired Israeli cloud security start-up Wiz,
pursued partnerships with US Customs and Border Patrol to update
towers by Israeli war contractor Elbit Systems with AI at the
US-Mexico border, and launched an AI partnership with the largest war
profiteer in the world: Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon are no longer the only
war corporations in town; Google and big tech are increasingly eating
their lunch. Big tech companies are being pushed by the market to
continue to bank returns. But having saturated the consumer and
enterprise markets, corporations like Google, in a contentious arms
race to dominate the cloud market, have identified the ever-ballooning
so-called “defense” budgets of the US and other governments as
major pots for profit.

One thing is clear: We urgently need an AI arms embargo.

For years, I have organized internally against Google’s full turn
toward war contracting. Along with other coworkers of conscience, we
have followed official internal channels to raise concerns in attempts
to steer the company in a better direction. Now, for the first time in
my more than 20 years of working at Google, I feel driven to speak
publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across
the globe, and the severity of the harm being done is rapidly
escalating.

Workers have always resisted the weaponization of technology, from
the United Farm Workers campaigns
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boycotts, broader community organizing, and labor strikes to the Black
American workers who organized the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers
Movement
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the use of Polaroid film technology in the passbooks of apartheid
South Africa (and won). We can find a basis for treating solidarity as
a workplace condition and organizing issue, and a way of building the
necessary power not only to make small gains
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to upend the power dynamic that allows our bosses to prioritize a
genocide over our own voices.

To win victories in our struggle towards humane technology, we must
act from a position of solidarity across our divisions: both with the
structurally disempowered people in our workplaces and the communities
that bear the brunt of the impact of the technologies,
from Palestinians bombed
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the AI platforms of Google and Amazon, to the workers in India facing
contracts with 14-hour workdays
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to the migrants being surveilled and tracked
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under the microscope of police surveillance, to the coworkers we
don’t see but who are surveilled and monitored in warehouse and data
facilities to the point that they are unable to use the bathroom for
fear of losing their job.

Only a strong, organized mass base of workers taking collective action
together can end the militarization of our company. Workers have
changed Google before. During Trump’s first administration, I joined
my colleagues to organize against Project Maven, Google’s contract
with the Department of Defense. We used our power
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workers to force Google to drop the contract.

As workers, our power to effect change is found in one another. We not
only have power when we come together, but also find community and
purpose in collective struggle as a way to endure these dark times
together. It is inspiring to be with other workers and grow our
strength and courage together.

To my fellow Google workers, and tech workers at large: If we don’t
act now, we will be conscripted into this administration’s fascist
and cruel agenda: deporting immigrants and dissidents, stripping
people of reproductive rights, rewriting the rules of our government
and economy to favor Big Tech billionaires, and continuing to power
the genocide of Palestinians.

As tech workers, we have a moral responsibility to resist complicity
and the militarization of our work before it’s too late.

_EMMA JACKSON has worked at Google for over 20 years. She is an
organizer with No Tech for Apartheid
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_Copyright c 2025 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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_Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the
breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of
the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical,
independent, and progressive voice in American journalism._

_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
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The Nation for just $24.95!_

_Donate $10 monthly to The Nation.
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* Google
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* military contractors
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* Technology
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* artificial intelligence
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* organizing
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* unions
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* Militarization
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