The calculation an ex-Microsoft engineer made to predict Palestinian deaths

A former software engineer at Microsoft was fired for organizing a candlelight vigil. Here's what he thinks about how incentives now need to change.

As an 11-year-old boy in Egypt, Hossam Nasr knew he wanted to be a computer scientist. He had his mind set on going to Harvard, which is where he went for undergrad in 2017.

What Hossam didn’t realize was that the same tech companies he relied on to witness the Arab Spring would be the same companies to—in his words—become the military industrial complex.

After Harvard, Nasr became a software engineer at Microsoft, where he was also a leader of the No Azure for Apartheid movement. Hard Reset sat down with him to talk about his childhood in Egypt, getting fired from Microsoft, and what power structures and incentives are pushing tech companies to militarize their policies and their products.

Ariella Steinhorn: Tell me a bit about your background growing up in Egypt and then coming to the U.S.?

Hossam Nasr: I was born and raised in Egypt, in a city on the Nile Delta called Mansoura. The most pivotal moment in my life was the Arab Spring, which happened when I was 11. The Arab Spring had a profound impact on my physical upbringing. Today I look back and believe that the Arab Spring was when I stopped being a child and started becoming a human being.

I also started coding when I was 11. I wrote my first program then, and I pretty instantly knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I actually didn’t think it would be a viable career path—I had no idea how important it would end up being, nor was I trying to pursue something lucrative. I just had a passion for it.

I had classic Arab parents who wanted me to go to medical school and become a doctor. In my culture, if you get good grades and you don’t go to engineering school or med school, you’re wasting your grades. When I told my parents I wanted to study computer science they would joke “what are you gonna do, become an IT technician and fix my computer?” I had to convince them and argue my case that this was a good career choice.

On January 13, 2011, I was away in Saudi Arabia for my dad’s job, and it was an unusually stormy night there. My dad was watching Al Jazeera, and I was catching glimpses of the revolution in Tunisia.

At that point in time, the former Tunisian president had just fled (ironically, to Saudi Arabia). This was breaking news, and it was such a mind-bending moment for me. I had never witnessed a change or transfer of power in any Arab country, nor did I think it was possible. The Arab presidents felt like monuments or statues—a static fact of life.

I was hooked. I came back from school every day to see what was happening over social media. There were rumors about the tide spreading to Egypt.

I was glued to my screen, watching it all unfold. At first it didn’t look like much—there were singular protests. But at one point, the president declared a state of emergency and deployed the army. That’s when it really blew up, and turned into a revolution.

The next several days were so emotional. I felt insane amounts of pride and honor, mixed with fear and anxiety. I was scared for people’s safety, and anxious to see how things would play out.

I was also jealous, because I wanted to be in Egypt so badly. In early February 2011 my parents said it wasn’t safe to return, so they had cancelled our flight back. I couldn’t help but think how problematic it was that we were chilling in bed in our comforts, and not putting everything on the line. I got into arguments with my parents—I felt that we should have been in the streets and not on the couch.

To this day, one of my biggest (if not the biggest) regrets of my life was not being in Egypt during that time.

The revolution symbolized the power of the people and the power of collective action. It meant being willing to put things on the line, and to sacrifice your privilege and life for what you believe in. It solidified the importance of these values for me: fighting for liberty, dignity, freedom, and human rights.

Despite the unfortunate outcome in every single Arab country, that lesson stays with me.

AS: What drew you to Harvard, did you always want to come to the U.S.?

HN: I spent all of my high school years trying to get into Harvard. I moved to Cairo to enroll in a British high school, as I thought I had a better chance of getting accepted after graduating from there. I traveled to the campus and loved the atmosphere and the professors.

I wanted to study computer science, and I knew at some point that it was not best for me to do that in Egypt. Plus, Harvard has even more of a weight in Egypt than in the U.S.—it’s seen as the pinnacle of achievement.

I felt total joy and euphoria the day I got accepted to Harvard—it was a dream come true. It was another lesson for me, that if you really put your heart and soul into something and don’t give up, anything is possible.

When I was at Harvard I did a lot of organizing, getting involved with the Palestine Solidarity Committee. It sounds naive now, but back then, I thought that people who go to a place like Harvard must know history—and that anyone who is educated would support Palestine.

But even in a place like Harvard, I was struck by how ignorant people were. People didn’t know basic information, like the fact that Israel was founded on the graves of Palestinian people.

I think there was a level of cognitive dissonance. People would have an understanding of the conflict, but they would find a way to justify or ambiguate things. To me, this showed a lack of moral consistency. People were up in arms about certain social justice issues—but then they would turn a blind eye to ethnic cleansing.

Overall it exposed me to the systems and the contradictions of the so-called “American Dream.” I saw the Zionist, capitalistic, rotten nature of the elite of this country—because Harvard is the breeding ground for that. Overall it made me more jaded and radicalized.

AS: You were so excited about computer science growing up. Did Microsoft have that same draw for you as Harvard?

HN: When it came down to joining Microsoft, I actually wasn’t all that excited. I had been a bit jaded during my four years at Harvard. So for me, it was just a job.

I did have feelings about being part of a big multinational corporation. But I thought that Microsoft was less evil than the other options I had. Plus, I was on a visa and needed someone to sponsor me. Only really big companies have the option to do that.

In hindsight, at that time, I was being deceived by the more sanitized image of Microsoft. Since Microsoft was juxtaposed with Meta's Cambridge Analytica scandal and Google’s Project Nimbus, I didn’t think it was so bad.

Microsoft also divested from Israeli facial recognition programs, which it had previously invested a few hundred million dollars into. I wasn’t under the idea that Microsoft was our savior. But I thought that that divestment was significant. I couldn’t think of another company that had divested from Israel like that.

AS: Walk me through your time at Microsoft—what you worked on, and at what point you started to feel uncomfortable with either your direct work or the company’s broader policies?

HN: I was a software engineer working on Azure. It wasn’t the best experience of my life, but it also wasn’t so bad that I felt I had to organize.

In May 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Microsoft divested from Russia. During a regularly scheduled Q&A with leadership, where anyone can ask questions about anything, I asked a simple question: It’s great to see Microsoft divesting from Russia. But when does Microsoft uphold those values—does it protect human rights when it is politically convenient? When victims are white? I referenced the Uyghur Muslims in China, the bombings of Syria and Yemen, and the killing of innocent Palestinian women and children in 2021, when we didn’t hear about that from leadership.

Asking that one question led HR to launch an investigation into me. For two hours I was grilled by an HR person, who halfway into our conversation revealed that she was Israeli. She accused me of singling out Israel, and said that I was not being respectful in the workplace—that I was not exhibiting “growth mindset” or “curiosity.”

At some point, we were getting into an argument about whether Israel was an apartheid state. She’s saying “are you aware that there are Arab members of the Knesset and the Supreme Court, and that Arabs are thriving in Israel?” I said, just because you have Black people in Congress, does that mean you don’t have racism? Why are you arguing with me about my political views?

It did shake me, but not the way they intended—I wasn’t intimidated. It made me realize that the bar of acceptable dissent was so much lower than compared to college, and that the level of complicity is also so much higher. That threw me for a loop.

This investigation also happened a few days prior to Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s assassination.

Frankly, the only reason I didn’t leave Microsoft is because I needed sponsorship. I didn’t want to start from scratch somewhere else. Plus, I wasn’t sure there was a place that wouldn’t be complicit.

AS: What was the climate like on and around October 7th? What did you feel that day, and was that a turning point?

HN: It was really scary, and I think we knew what was about to happen. Naively, I thought that we would get another round of “mowing the lawn”—similar to what happened in 2021, which was a few weeks of bombing, killing a few hundred Palestinians to get revenge.

That was the naive hope. I went back to all the old confrontations between Israel and Palestine and looked at the ratio—how many Israelis vs. Palestinians were killed. I took the most murderous ratio in 2014 and applied the same ratio to today.

On October 7th, 1,200 Israelis were killed. So based on the 2014 ratio, 38,600 Palestinians would die.

I remember seeing that number, and thinking that there is no way they can apply that same ratio. In hindsight, it is shameful and gut-wrenching that the true numbers will be much worse. It’s not just another round of merciless bombings—it’s genocide.

AS: When did you come up with the idea to hold a vigil? As you were planning it, did you ever imagine it might pose a risk to your job?

HN: We decided to host the vigil to humanize all of the Palestinians who had been killed. We wanted to remember the countless victims, and I wanted to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity. I wanted people to remember that we are not divorced from the scenes on our phones.

During October, Microsoft employees can host fundraising events to invite in employee donations and be matched. Our vigil was part of that, and we wanted to do something that was the least controversial or confrontational: an outdoor candlelight vigil during lunchtime. It was the most vanilla idea that would still honor and remember the people who died.

I didn't think the vigil itself would harm my job—it’s inherently a peaceful thing. And on its face, it’s not political; it is honoring lost lives and Palestinian humanitarian relief.

But there is a double-standard, a Palestine exception to free speech. I had already faced indirect targeting and harassment for previous activism, but I thought Microsoft would be stupid if they tried to target our vigil. I thought that at some point I would be fired for my advocacy—I just didn’t think the vigil was going to be the thing.

But Microsoft got aggravated. They never articulated what policy we were violating, but tried to shut us down the day before.

The vibe that day from Microsoft was so militarized. Security told us to go away, that the vigil was unauthorized. They called the police, and one officer showed up—but they never arrested us, probably realizing that a visual of them arresting their employees wasn’t a good look.

The vigil itself drew around 150 people online (it was live-streamed) and 50 in-person. It was beautiful, and it fostered a sense of community and solidarity; a space for people to mourn and grieve. We displayed flowers and pictures, employees wrote notes and held candles. It was a somber vibe, but also powerful.

That evening at 9pm, I got the phone call that I was fired. (Though hours before then, my firing was leaked to a group called Stop Anti-Semitism that had publicly called on Microsoft to fire me.)

Some people spoke to me afterwards, sharing that they had no idea Microsoft was complicit in this way, that they wanted to get involved.

For me, it is striking that it was more offensive for Microsoft to see people come together peacefully than to see Palestinian children torn to pieces.

AS: It all seems pretty retaliatory. Did you consider legal action against Microsoft after being fired?

HN: I did. I had been advised early on that I could have a case. I spoke to lawyers before I was fired, and I got some advice from CAIR Washington, who released a statement defending us after we were fired.

The legal options are still on the table, but they’re not my top priority. My top priority has been to do whatever I can to stop Microsoft’s complicity.

AS: What do you say to people who claim that you and your co-host of the vigil are “members/supporters” of Hamas?

HN: I think it’s a tired excuse of an accusation.

While at Microsoft I reported comments about me that used anti-Muslim rhetoric, like the idea I am part of Hamas. HR failed to take action, and that person did not receive any consequences.

Meanwhile, I was punished for saying that Palestinians deserve freedom, dignity, and liberty. My stock award and my bonus were zero after speaking up, and I received the lowest possible performance review. I was banned from the internal company platform for six months.

At the end of the day, children are being killed with our tax dollars. Over 60,000 people have been killed—and counting. It’s an absurd distraction, and offensive to all the lives lost in Palestine.

AS: Tell me about your work with No Azure for Apartheid?

HN: When I first joined the company I didn’t know much about Azure specifically, or how Israel was using it to automate its regime. Much of that came out via external reporting and leaks. I didn’t realize what a lack of transparency there was at Microsoft, how much information they were hiding.

A lot of employees felt tricked and lied to—they felt that Microsoft needed to disclose their ties with governments and weapons manufacturers. Employees didn’t sign up to work for a weapons manufacturer. At least when people work for Boeing and Lockheed Martin, they know what they’re signing up for.

Microsoft sells cloud storage that collectively forms all of the major tech infrastructure for Israel’s military—specific naval units and the Air Force. Artificial intelligence tools track Palestinians, marking them as targets. We now know how loose Israel plays with those systems; that they require as little human verification as simply seeing whether that person labeled as a target is a male or not. That’s it.

In one case reported by the AP, 1,000 high school students were marked as targets because their names appeared in an Excel sheet for high school grades. That’s all the AI model used to mark them as terrorists and targets for bombing.

In a case like that, there is no human verification procedure. And this is all enabled by Microsoft’s technology (and Google and Amazon’s). Without it, Israel would not have been as effective. The amount of surveillance data covered by Palestinians requires a scale of storage and processing that only the leaders of AI—three tech companies—are able to provide.

Today, cloud services and AI are as essential as the physical munitions, tanks, and planes. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are the military industrial complex of the 21st century. We must call for a digital arms embargo to stop the sales of cloud and AI to Israel’s military.

AS: This makes me think about the forces at play that are making this the norm. Is this coming from the CEO? Shareholders who want to see money made from military contracts? Managers? All of the above? Curious to know your thoughts around the ideological underpinnings here and power dynamics.

HN: That’s a good question. I think for me, there are four things I think about, four different factors all at play.

The first and most important, the most salient: pure capitalist profit-driven incentive. Profit-seeking companies will do whatever to maximize profits. The world and the country’s capitalist system is so cruel, and if the moral and reputational cost of participating is not high enough to impact profit, companies won’t change anything.

The second: people in high levels of decision-making are ideologically committed to Zionism, even if it’s not profitable. Some of these Microsoft executives are very public with their views online.

The third piece: ideological conviction, and the element of pressure and lobbying by AIPAC on the US government.

And the final piece is the middle managers at Microsoft, people who are not really at top levels of decision-making. They put their head down to play within the system, effectively capitulating. Even if in secret they might disagree with Microsoft, they prioritize their career and reach and access to people higher up. This is ultimately why silence is prevalent. People capitulate, even if they don’t have conviction that this is the right thing.

AS: Microsoft is reportedly blocking emails with the words “Palestine” or “Gaza” – how have you heard about this impacting your former colleagues? 

HN: I’m connected with so many people at the company who are telling me they want to leave Microsoft, that they cannot sit with the weight of being complicit anymore. Some have quit or resigned in very public ways, others in ways that are less public. Some people want to try and change the company from the inside. Dozens of people have reached out to our campaign.

All of these tactics are valid. What is not valid, in my mind, is the choice to stay silent.

AS: How do you think tech companies (or any other org for that matter) should handle peaceful vigils related to Gaza or civil opposition to Israeli policies? 

HN: It’s not about the vigil. Microsoft should not be arming anyone with digital weapons. They should not have been working with the Israeli military even in early 2023, which was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank (a place where there is no Hamas).

Gaza has the world’s largest open-air prison—with a blockade that was suffocating people to death. Meanwhile, the Israeli prison service was another customer of Microsoft’s.

AS: What incentives need to change?

HN: Ultimately, honestly, we need to value human life. We need to value human life regardless of whether it is politically convenient, regardless of whether it is profitable or not. If we assigned value to Palestinian life, we would not be having this conversation.

With Russia, people were able to empathize. It was easy to recognize the idea that you should not do business with the entire economy. Microsoft didn’t divest from certain businesses in Russia, they pulled out of the country entirely.

AS: So how do we humanize?

HN: We do that by speaking up and standing up for what is right, despite the consequences. The average people who aren’t the billionaires, execs, or people in power realize that we’re all humans at the end of the day. People are seeing on their phones the most awful, graphic things—being paid for with our tax dollars, labor, and funding. All of us have to act on that in a material way, and have the spine to do that.

It doesn’t have to be through protest. Take the case of Ms. Rachel. She is facing backlash for having the humanity to recognize Palestinian children as human beings. She advocates for children everywhere.

AS: It makes me think that we have become so accustomed to this idea of collateral damage in the U.S. For example, during World War II, the innocent Japanese who died in the atomic bombings were collateral damage, necessary to “ending the war” early or signaling our might to Russia.

HN: It’s a good exercise to challenge whether you have moral consistency by flipping the roles and seeing how people

What if Japan had bombed New York City or Los Angeles, with the justification that “this saves more lives in the long-term.” Would we accept that as moral?

Let’s take the Israeli claim at face value, that they are bombing terrorists. Would we accept a bombing here where terrorists were holding kids hostage in a school? Even if we accept Israel’s talking point around innocents as human shields, we need to flip the script.

AS: Right, we probably wouldn’t be so happy about that. So what have you been working on since you were fired?

HN: I have mostly been organizing, and I’m still in the job search. I don’t want my employer to be complicit in the same way again.

Computer science is my passion. I do believe that technology can be used for good. I want to work on something that feels meaningful, I’m not sure what yet.

Part of it is, the industry has become so hijacked by the oligarchy. All of the industry is weaponized to maximize profits and serve government states, to surveil everyone and monetize data. It’s hard to imagine how to break free.

AS: To that point, what do you think the future holds for activism in tech? Will people like you ultimately move outside of working within tech to apply pressure? 

HN: I don’t know. What I do know is that it will come to a head. There will be a breaking point, a boiling point.

A lot of people like me were illusioned by the promise of tech. I grew up at a time when social media was heralded as this force of democratization, as a tool of subversion to organize and connect. That was also coupled with the promise of tech as a force for good, that it would be our collective savior from the errors of society.

You now see how the tech industry has slowly degraded that promise. OpenAI, once a nonprofit, signed its first contract with the US military for work in Africa. Right now, as we speak, Microsoft is selling OpenAI technology, including GPT-4, to the Israeli military. It’s being used in the machinery of war and genocide. That’s one example of many.

AS: Will you stay in the U.S.?

HN: Here’s how I think about staying in the U.S. I do believe that by staying in this country, I am complicit, that my tax dollars are going to fund bombs. There is no running away from that.

But I also feel that there is an obligation or duty that comes with resisting that complicity. To organize—with the privilege of being in the belly of the beast—is to end this occupation. For me, the question boils down to: is my work and impact offsetting the harm that I’m doing by staying here and paying taxes? I believe the answer is yes. I am hopefully costing the military industrial complex more than I am contributing to it.

Thanks for reading. If there are any tech companies that you think we should cover—or if you are a tech employee with information yourself—feel free to reach out to Hard Reset. I’m also at Signal at @aristeinhorn.17.