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How Gaza Broke Big Tech’s Campus Pipeline

Big Tech’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza has pushed STEM students to organize for a more ethical tech industry.

Former Google employees speak out against Big Tech at UC Berkeley’s Pro-Palestinian encampment.

STEM graduates once clamored for jobs in Big Tech, but not so readily anymore. Since Israel began its genocide in Gaza, it has relied on AI and surveillance systems developed by once-dream-job companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Today, many students and workers, uncomfortable with the prospect of fortifying the Israeli war machine, are engaging in a concerted effort to build alternative futures in technology.

At the center of this organizing are UC Berkeley students, who are just miles away from Silicon Valley. On August 27, 2025, Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences lecturer Peyrin Kao launched an open-ended hunger strike to protest the use of technology in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The hunger strike, which lasted 38 days, demanded that the university acknowledge its role in Israel’s genocide and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, pledge to sever material or financial relationships with the US military, and institutionalize ethical standards aligned with international human rights law.

While Kao suspended his hunger strike because of health concerns, his demands highlighted the University of California’s long-standing entanglement with the military industrial complex. In May 2024, the UC system disclosed that they had $32 billion invested in assets that Palestine solidarity protesters called for divestment from. Research across UC campuses has received $5.6 billion from 2005 to 2022 from the Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Atomics, Boeing, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense. From 2017 to 2022, UC campuses received 1,428 total military-funded research grants.

“There are a lot of moral questions behind what we make and whether they are being used for good or for occupation, apartheid, and genocide,” Kao said. “These things are happening with companies that our students aspire to work for, like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and with our university investment. When you don’t say something, you’re making a political choice to say that you’re OK with all of this going on.”

During the hunger strike, students and staff across........

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