> Unless Microsoft is directly supplying the software which surveils instead of just “general purpose compute” this isn’t as big as Norway would want you to believe. They can just terminate the accounts as violations of terms of service

They did: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/09/25/update-...

The Norway wealth fund is a co owner of Microsoft, like everyone with shares. Google says they own 1.35%, worth 50 billion.

If they want Microsoft not to provide "general compute" to the Israeli army then they can try to get a majority of Microsft owners to go along with it.

I think that's not the same as pressure on Microsoft from the outside.

If Microsoft were providing "general purpose compute to Iran" the US would sanction them.

Yes, its general purpose compute. But if you or me use Azure for illegal purpose (pirated content, tax evasion, violence etc etc..), for sure Microsoft won't be sitting idle.

Any export increases of gun metal grade, high carbon steel should be a red flag these days to stateside corporations operating in war zones. Structural steel is a low carbon steel that has more 'give' and is easier to weld. It's obvious which is which.

In Sweden's case, however, even pre-war they were already exporting 40% of Germany's demand for raw ore which increased to 50% during wartime iirc. So Germany already had the infrastructure necessary to process the raw materials into steel, and at scale scale beforehand.

In modern warfare, those same foundaries would make easy aerial targets due to the massive heat output from the bessimer process required to make steel from raw ore.

Palantir is a data and ml platform. They don’t create point solutions for people. The solutions created are owned by the people contracting Palantir. If you hate on Palantir - you can hate on pretty much all industry in the west - oil and gas for supplying fuel, farmers for supplying food, consulting companies for consulting for the government, general population for paying taxes, etc.

This entire thing is just political showboating. I mean feel free to not buy food and fuel.

> I don’t think punishing the steel maker for a gun maker who sold it to a distributor who then sold it to a nut job should be liable for the nut job

Nobody thinks that, because it's ridiculous. This is a false equivalence. Isolated crimes are inevitable, and impossible to solve with any single thing.

But when it comes to genocide, you can stop or at least limit it by going after the suppliers who equip the group with the tools to carry it out. Microsoft is one such supplier, and they know exactly what they're doing. If our government isn't going to do something, an activist shareholder is a decent alternative.

It's relevant because Microsoft, like all big companies, have Human Rights Pricinples and such that are part of the company. It's basically impossible to get big institutional investment without it.

The issue is that they were caught not following their practices, and then lying about it. So the shareholders are asking that they produce a report about whether they are following their own human rights principles.

And Satya is resisting it, because it is very clear that they are not following them, as workers [1] have been calling out for years now. Many leaked documents have shown that Microsoft actually embeds employees directly with the IDF and makes millions in service contracts with them. [2]

[1] https://noazureforapartheid.com/ [2] https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-cu...

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It’s more akin to an arms manufacturer knowingly supplying a genocidal regime.

As for targeting Palantir instead, boycott, divestment, and sanctions is most effective when it targets all the complicit players.

Actually we should as well, given the shady deals some of them make with politicians, which create a set of cascading events that end up in school shootings as if they were good old saloon fights.