“If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes, you inevitably become complicit in those crimes”: Brian Eno calls out Microsoft over ties to Israeli governmentAmbient music legend Brian Eno has denounced Microsoft, saying its ties to the Israeli government “leads to surveillance, violence and destruction in Palestine”.
Eno has historical professional ties with the technology corporation, having composed the startup chime for its Windows 95 operating system.

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In a lengthy new social post, Eno notes that while he “gladly took on the project as a creative challenge”, he “never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery and oppression of war”.
Eno mentions a recent blog post by Microsoft, in which it acknowledged providing the Israel Ministry of Defence (IMOD) with “software, professional services, Azure cloud services, and Azure AI services, including language translation”.
Microsoft explained that its relationship with the IMOD is structured as a “standard commercial relationship, and that the IMOD is bound by Microsoft’s terms of service and conditions of use.
“These require customers to implement core responsible AI practices – such as human oversight and access controls – and prohibit the use of our cloud and AI services in any manner that inflicts harm on individuals or organisations or affects individuals in any way that is prohibited by law.”
It went on: “Based on our review, including both our internal assessments and external review, we have found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”
While Microsoft said it is “important to acknowledge that [it] does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices”, Eno accuses these services “support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organisations, the United Nations experts, and increasing numbers of governments from around the world, as genocidal”.
He adds: “Selling and facilitating advanced AI and cloud services to a government engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing is not ‘business as usual’. It is complicity. If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes, you inevitably become complicit in those crimes.”
Calling on Microsoft to “suspend all services that support any operations that contribute to violations of international law”, Brian Eno pledges that the fee he received for his Windows 95 chime will now go towards helping the citizens of Gaza.
“If a sound can signal a real change, then let it be this one,” he says.

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Microsoft is under increasing pressure over its working relationship with the IMOD, including from its own employees. As reported by The Verge, firmware engineer Joe Lopez interrupted a keynote by CEO Satya Nadella, yelling: “How about you show Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”
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