Microsoft

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Greenwashing

Climate Pledges

In 2017, Microsoft pledged to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement[1] and reduce operational carbon emissions 75% (from a 2013 baseline) by 2030.[2]

In 2020, Microsoft pledged an even bolder goal of becoming "carbon negative" by 2030[3] the same week it was co-sponsoring the 12th International Conference on Petroleum Technology in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.[4]

These climate pledges have not yet acknowledged or accounted for the impact of its billion-dollar deals with major oil corporations, in which it plays the leading role in designing custom-made automation software projected to profit the oil industry up to 100 billion dollars in the coming decade while expanding exploration, drilling, and production.[5]

Climate Denial

Along with Google and Facebook, Microsoft sponsored a tech conference in 2019 featuring multiple climate denial organizations and panelists.[6][7] The company contributed $10,000 toward LibertyCon, which featured speakers from the climate denial organizations CO2 Coalition and the Heartland Institute.[8][9]

In 2021, Microsoft joined with Apple, Amazon, Disney, and other American corporations and lobbying groups to oppose a proposed U.S. congressional $3.5 trillion bill containing "unprecedented measures to drive down planet-heating gases"[10] because it "raised taxes on the wealthy."[11] Although the bill eventually passed as the Inflation Reduction Act, lobbying pressure forced numerous compromises watering down or undermining many of the bill's ambitious climate goals.[12]

“Major corporations love to tell us how committed they are to addressing the climate crisis and building a sustainable future,” Kyle Herrig, president of watchdog group Accountable.US, which compiled the analysis, told The Guardian. “But behind closed doors, they are funding the very industry trade groups that are fighting tooth and nail to stop the biggest climate change bill ever.”[13]

Oil Industry Collaboration

Cloud Computing

Microsoft is "working overtime" to close deals with the world’s biggest oil companies to help them boost fossil fuel production using the latest information technology.

For example, in February 2019 Microsoft and Exxon Mobil announced that they are partnering in the “largest-ever" oil and gas deal to use cloud computing, which the corporations say will boost production up to 50,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.[14] This is despite the company's pledge to build a "clean and responsible cloud."[15] This joint project to increase Exxon's profitability and production in the Permian Basin has been reported by Greenpeace to inflate Microsoft's yearly carbon footprint by 20 percent alone.[16][17]

Earlier, in October 2017, Chevron signed a seven-year deal with Microsoft in October worth hundreds of millions - if not billions[18] - of dollars, using cloud computing to capture, store, and analyze terabytes of data for everything from underwater oil exploration to refineries.[19] Chevron plans to use the cloud to do everything from finding more oil to predicting needed maintenance on equipment to keep extraction operations running smoothly. The oil company is in the process of selling some of its data centers to Microsoft and plans to move the majority of its data and applications to the company. "This is happening, and it’s happening fast,” said Bill Braun, Chevron's Chief Information Officer.

In 2018, Equinor, the company formerly known as Statoil, announced it had signed a cloud contract with Microsoft for its operations worth hundreds of millions of dollars.[20][21] Despite joint marketing of their partnership around carbon capture and storage,[22][23] Equinor's profits are primarily driven by oil and gas,[24], and the company is still seeking new oil & gas drilling licenses in 2022.[25]

Earlier in 2018, Microsoft also announced that it would make its cloud computing available to oil and gas companies in the Middle East through two data centres in Dubai and Abu Dhabi [26]

Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft develops custom artificial intelligence software for the oil industry, leading the industry with even more contracts than tech rivals Amazon and Google.[27]

At the Abu Dhabi International Exhibition & Conference in 2018, one of the largest global events for the oil and gas sector, Microsoft's exhibit theme was titled “Empowering Oil & Gas with AI.” One Microsoft director touted the benefits of “AI, leveraging of the intelligent cloud and edge computing" for the oil industry as "manifest(ing) in better reservoir characterization, optimized drilling, reduced downtime, and safer operations to mention a few."[28]

At this booth, Microsoft partners Maana, Taqtile, Blackstone, and DynaView exhibited their tech built on Microsoft's platform to support oil exploration, drilling, inspections, maintenance, asset tracking, resource geofencing, and geosteering for well paths and landing, using tech solutions such as IoT, VR, data visualization, and more.[29]

Microsoft Azure has also sold machine vision software to Shell Oil, and is powering its all-out “machine learning push.”[30][31]

Microsoft helped British Petroleum build an AI tool to help determine how much oil in a given reserve is recoverable.[32]

Cybersecurity

At the Abu Dhabi International Exhibition & Conference in 2018, Patrik Sjoestedt, Regional Business Leader for Manufacturing & Resources Industry, Microsoft EMEA, shared insights in a panel discussion to address the rising cyber and infrastructure vulnerabilities of critical oil and gas assets.[33]

Psychological Warfare

In a strategy presentation from 1995, Microsoft's chief technology evangelist defined "evangelism" (marketing) as a "war" waged by the company with "psychological, economic, and political" weapons to achieve "total victory: ... a computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software." [34]

In these documents, Microsoft explicitly defined its "power evangelism" as a form of mind control:

“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”[35]

To achieve this goal, the company advocated numerous astroturfing techniques including:

1. subverting independent developer conferences

2. infiltrating and subvert developer magazines

3. monitoring (and write on) relevant online forums at all times

4. getting 'expert' third parties to write books on Microsoft's behalf [36]

This strategy and tactics were kept secret until forcibly divulged in a lawsuit resolved by a $179 million settlement paid out by Microsoft in 2007.[37] The following year, James Plamodon, the author of this strategy (who had since quit the company), disclosed that:

“It could be argued that Microsoft’s unethical Technology Evangelism (TE) practices are “old news”—i.e., that Microsoft stopped using these questionable TE practices long ago. This is very unlikely to be the case...”[38]

US Military Collaboration

NSA Surveillance

US Army

The US Army awarded Microsoft a 10-year contract in 2021 worth ~$21.88 billion to produce a headset with augmented capabilities, or "Integrated Visual Augmentation System," based on the tech giant’s HoloLens technology.[39]

In 2022, Microsoft acquired Miburo, a cyberwar analysis company founded by Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent.[40]

US Airforce

In September 2017, the US Air Force (USAF) awarded the largest cloud contract in the government market yet with a $1 billion investment in a team composed of Dell, General Dynamics, and Microsoft.[41] The USAF is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world.[42]

NDIA

In October 2021, the National Defense Industry Association (NDIA) named 16 new members of its board, including David Caswell, head of critical infrastructure engineering at Microsoft.[43]

Sources

  1. ↑ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsofts-reaction-white-house-announcement-paris-agreement-smith/
  2. ↑ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/11/14/microsoft-pledges-cut-carbon-emissions-75-percent-2030/
  3. ↑ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/
  4. ↑ https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgqypn/while-microsoft-was-making-its-climate-pledge-it-was-sponsoring-an-oil-conference
  5. ↑ https://grist.org/energy/microsofts-ambitious-climate-goal-forgets-about-its-oil-contracts/
  6. ↑ https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799
  7. ↑ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/ocasio-cortez-takes-facebook-microsoft-and-google-to-task-for-conference-promoting-climate-denial/
  8. ↑ https://gizmodo.com/aoc-slams-google-facebook-and-microsoft-for-sponsorin-1832131766
  9. ↑ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/google-facebook-and-microsoft-sponsored-a-conference-that-promoted-climate-change-denial/
  10. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/01/apple-amazon-microsoft-disney-lobby-groups-climate-bill-analysis
  11. ↑ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/01/apple-amazon-alphabet-microsoft-disney-lobby-against-biden-climate-initiative/
  12. ↑ https://branchoutnow.org/democrats-in-congress-compromise-on-climate-goals-to-pass-inflation-reduction-act/
  13. ↑ https://www.ecowatch.com/greenwashing-corporations-climate-action-2655204112.html
  14. ↑ https://thinkprogress.org/amazon-google-microsoft-oil-climate-b8b1dd15f115/
  15. ↑ https://blogs.microsoft.com/green/2018/06/01/a-year-later-we-are-still-in/
  16. ↑ https://news.microsoft.com/2019/02/22/exxonmobil-to-increase-permian-profitability-through-digital-partnership-with-microsoft/
  17. ↑ https://grist.org/energy/microsofts-ambitious-climate-goal-forgets-about-its-oil-contracts/
  18. ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/10/30/chevron-partners-with-microsoft-in-cloud
  19. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-courts-a-wary-oil-patch-1532424600
  20. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-courts-a-wary-oil-patch-1532424600
  21. ↑ https://www.energy-reporters.com/industry/equinor-and-microsoft-7-year-sign-deal/
  22. ↑ https://www.equinor.com/news/archive/20201014-northern-lights-microsoft
  23. ↑ https://no.usembassy.gov/microsoft-signs-mou-with-equinor-on-carbon-capture-and-storage-value-chain/
  24. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/equinor-posts-record-profit-boosted-by-soaring-gas-2022-10-28/
  25. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/equinor-others-apply-right-explore-oil-gas-off-norway-2022-09-13/
  26. ↑ https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/2018/11/12/microsoft-demonstrates-the-power-of-ai-and-cloud-to-oil-and-gas-players-at-adipec-2018/
  27. ↑ https://grist.org/energy/microsofts-ambitious-climate-goal-forgets-about-its-oil-contracts/
  28. ↑ https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799
  29. ↑ https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799
  30. ↑ https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/shell-mining-oil-gas-azure-databricks
  31. ↑ https://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/shell-in-ai-machine-learning-push/
  32. ↑ https://news.microsoft.com/transform/bp-ai-drilling-data-fueling-smarter-decisions/
  33. ↑ https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/2018/11/12/microsoft-demonstrates-the-power-of-ai-and-cloud-to-oil-and-gas-players-at-adipec-2018/
  34. ↑ http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/comes-3096.pdf
  35. ↑ http://techrights.org/2017/09/28/osi-and-microsoft/
  36. ↑ http://techrights.org/2017/09/28/osi-and-microsoft/
  37. ↑ http://techrights.org/2007/04/10/comes-iowa-novell/
  38. ↑ http://techrights.org/2008/12/27/microsoft-shills-aka-te-secrets/
  39. ↑ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/microsofts-headset-for-the-military-reportedly-results-in-physical-impairments-during-tests/
  40. ↑ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/microsoft-to-acquire-cyber-threat-analysis-startup-miburo/
  41. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210923075530/https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2017/09/21/dell-emc-gd-microsoft-cloud-contract.aspx
  42. ↑ https://truthout.org/articles/the-military-assault-on-global-climate/
  43. ↑ https://www.govconwire.com/2021/10/ndia-appoints-16-members-to-board/
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