Brian Eno, the composer of the Windows 95 startup sound, has penned an open letter calling for Microsoft to stop providing artificial intelligence and cloud services to the Israeli military.Titled “Not in My Name,” the letter outlines the company’s technological support for Israel’s Ministry of Defense, as detailed in a Microsoft blog post last week.
“If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes, you inevitably become complicit in those crimes,” wrote Eno.In response, he pledges to donate his fee for the Windows 95 composition to victims of the attacks in Gaza.In the letter, Eno said his original work with Microsoft “represented a gateway to a promising technological future.” He added, “I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”Eno cited the Microsoft blog post as evidence of its collaboration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and the company’s “support of a regime,” he wrote, “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.”Eno went on to express solidarity with Microsoft workers who have “done something truly disruptive and refused to stay silent.” Find his full letter below.Brian Eno is a longtime critic of Israel and supporter of the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Through his support of the Palestinian people and the BDS movement, he has often urged musicians not to play concerts in Israel.Cease-Fire Now: 16 Benefit Compilations for PalestineNot in My Name: An Open Letter to Microsoft from Brian EnoIn the mid-1990s, I was asked to compose a short piece of music for Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.Millions - possibly even billions - of people have since heard that short start-up chime—which represented a gateway to a pr...