SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Microsoft has announced it has disabled the Israeli military's access to some of the company's cloud and AI products. The move comes after a company review found that Israel's defense ministry was using a set of Microsoft services to carry out mass surveillance of Palestinians. In a blog post last week, the tech giant says it does not provide technology to, quote, "facilitate mass surveillance of citizens." Microsoft is one of the first tech companies to remove or disable services to Israel since the war in Gaza began almost two years ago.
And to help make sense of what this means and what it tells us about the broader state of warfare these days, we have called up Paul Scharre. He's the executive vice president at the bipartisan think tank the Center for a New American Security, and author of "Four Battlegrounds: Power In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence." Welcome back to the program.
PAUL SCHARRE: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: And a note that we reached out to Israel's defense ministry for comment but did not hear back. The Guardian reporting that really first broke this story suggested that they were maybe using this data to record millions of cell phone calls and store the audio of these calls in the cloud. So I'm curious what you made of this announcement, of this decision from Microsoft.
SCHARRE: Well, tech companies are having to navigate some difficult relationships, where they have competing interests from a variety of different stakeholders. So they've certainly got U.S. and foreign governments that might be using some of their services. They have to navigate the U.S. government as a regulator, and then how consumers view that company and their brand and their employees. A lot of the technology that some of these tech companies are developing is very dual-use. It has really impressive applications in business, also in military and surveillance applications. And companies are having to figure out, well, what kind of use cases are they comfortable with and is going to fit with the brand, their mission as a company?
DETROW: You know, it seemed like there was a while where a lot of the big tech companies were shying away for this kind of work or making broad promises that they wouldn't directly sell services for military operations or things like that. What have you seen that's changed and why do you think that is in recent years?
SCHARRE: I think it's actually hard for the tech companies to know where to draw a clear line in terms of their services. So it's one thing to say, OK, we don't want to be involved in directly lethal operations, for example. They're not a defense contractor. They don't want to be building bombs or missiles. On the other hand, OK, does that mean that you're going to say, we're not going to allow a military to use their applications, their software, many of which might be consumer-facing and widely available? And they may not even know until it happens. Oh, their services are being used in some way, and then the company has to kind of take a look and say, well, is that really consistent with our terms of use and our policies?
DETROW: At the end of the day, how much do you think a Microsoft or an Amazon or Google has culpability or has responsibility if their products are being used for, you know, facial recognition or mass surveillance that does lead to deadly strikes in warfare?
SCHARRE: I think companies bear a moral responsibility to ensure that their technology is used in a way that's consistent with democratic values and the rule of law. I don't think it's fair to put the onus on companies themselves to try to figure out, OK, is this specific military application acceptable or not. But, you know, if companies are working with a democratic-elected government that is adhering to the rule of law, that is protecting human rights, then I think it's fair for the company to say, hey, we're going to work with, say, the U.S. government. We're going to trust what they're doing. But I think, you know, companies do bear responsibility for how their products are used.
DETROW: That's Paul Scharre, the executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security. Thank you so much.
SCHARRE: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
