About 100 Protesters Breach Microsoft Data Center Site in Amsterdam, Unfurling Anti-AI and Gaza Banners
Updated
Updated · The Verge · Nov 6
About 100 Protesters Breach Microsoft Data Center Site in Amsterdam, Unfurling Anti-AI and Gaza Banners
1 articles · Updated · The Verge · Nov 6
Summary
Around 100 protesters entered a Microsoft data center construction site in Amsterdam on Friday, with some climbing a crane to hang a “Fuck AI” banner and others displaying “Microsoft powers genocide.”
Geef Tegengas helped organize the action against three planned 85-meter data center towers, while demonstrators also chanted “Microsoft has got to go” and “free Palestine.”
The protest targets a project in which Microsoft is the sole tenant; the site is being built by Pure Data Centres and advanced under plans dating to 2016 despite Amsterdam’s ban on new data centers until 2030.
The action fits a broader European backlash against data centers, days after activists staged a mock Israeli checkpoint outside a Microsoft facility in Dublin and amid wider scrutiny of AI-linked power and land use.
Microsoft has also faced internal protests over its technology’s use in Israel’s war against Hamas, and last month dropped its biggest UK data center project after grid officials said power would not be available until the 2030s.