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Microsoft employees yesterday demanded that the company abort a $ 479 million contract providing the HoloLens Helmet Army, thus calling it a corruption of the previous work of the designers and engineers and an affront to those who opposed the design of weapons of war.
In a letter to the CEO of Microsoft and its President, Microsoft Workers 4 Good, an organization of employees created in late January, also asked the company to stop developing any weapons technology, to commit to a policy of acceptable use of its products and to appoint a committee of ethics to verify this commitment.
Microsoft Workers 4 Good tweeted the letter yesterday afternoon; Late last night, the group said that more than 100 employees had signed it.
In November, Microsoft and the Army reached an agreement to develop an "Integrated Visual Augmentation System" based on the Hololens Augmented Reality Platform. The military, according to reports at the time, explicitly stated that the technology was aimed at "increasing lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage with the enemy".
Hololens was announced in January 2015 and has not yet been launched as a consumer product. A development kit costs around $ 3,000. According to reports published in late 2018, Microsoft has sold about 50,000 devices. The army alone would buy twice that amount in the contract.
"The application of HoloLens within the [Integrated Visual Augmentation System] is designed to help people kill, "said the letter from the employee. "It will be deployed on the battlefield and will work by transforming the war into a simulated" video game ", which will further distance the soldiers from the enormous stakes of the war and the reality of bloodshed."
In November, Microsoft President Brad Smith defended the company's collaboration with the military, noting that the two have been working together for more than 30 years. "We believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the best technology in the country, including Microsoft," Smith said. He added that employees who oppose the development of technologies for the military could be greeted by a transfer to other projects or work teams within the company.
On Friday, the group of employees said that "it does not take into account that workers are not properly informed of the use of their work." areas as disparate as architecture, surgery, automotive design and space exploration. "These engineers have now lost their ability to make decisions about their work, instead of finding themselves involved as war profiteers."
Microsoft Workers 4 Good, according to his Twitter pageorganized so that workers can "hold Microsoft accountable for its declared values." He has already criticized the company's political action committee for making contributions "to candidates who did not act in the interests of Microsoft's core values" – especially conservative or right-wing politicians.
The letter of Friday was addressed to Smith and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. A spokesman for Microsoft, in a statement to The Guardian, did not respond to the substance of the group's criticism but said the company "still appreciates the comments of employees."
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