Google co-founder Sergey Brin calls UN ‘transparently antisemitic’ after report on tech firms and Gaza

Google co-founder Sergey Brin called the United Nations “transparently antisemitic” on Saturday in an internal forum for employees, according to screenshots reviewed by The Washington Post and verified with a current member of the forum.

His comments came in response to a UN report released last month that alleged technology firms including Google and its parent company Alphabet had profited from “the genocide carried out by Israel” in Gaza by providing cloud and AI technologies to the Israeli government and military.

“With all due respect, throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides. I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the UN in relation to these issues,” Brin wrote in a forum for staff at Google DeepMind, the company’s artificial intelligence division, where workers were debating the report, according to the screenshots.

The UN report was authored by its special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Italian legal scholar Francesca Albanese. The US representative to the UN has asked for her removal, accusing her of antisemitism and bias against Israel.

Critics of Israel have said its war in Gaza meets the definition of genocide, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected those claims, saying his country is defending itself against an attempted genocide by Hamas. The Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, has said the war has killed over 57 000 Palestinians.

“My comments came in response to an internal discussion that was citing a plainly biased and misleading report,” Brin said in a statement provided by his spokesperson. Google and the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment.

Brin rarely comments in the internal forum, which is hosted on Google Chat and has nearly 2 500 members, many of them AI researchers. His accusation against the UN confused and upset some employees, according to the forum member and screenshots reviewed by The Post.

Google’s leadership has previously clashed with and fired workers who protested the company’s dealings with Israel after its military action in Gaza following the Hamas attacks on the country on October 7, 2023, that killed about 1 200 people.

The company moved to sell its AI tools to Israel’s military after the incursion by the militant group, The Post reported in January.

Brin immigrated to the United States as a child with his parents, Russian Jews who sought to escape the antisemitism they faced in the Soviet Union, according to the 2009 book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It,” by Ken Auletta. Brin and Google co-founder Larry Page left their daily roles at the company in 2019. But Brin has become involved with Google’s efforts to compete in AI following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.

The UN report names corporations that the organisation’s special rapporteur Albanese says should be held accountable for Israel’s military action in Gaza. It claims American tech giants have capitalized on a lucrative opportunity created by its military’s expanding need for computing services and cloud storage, driven by the copious data generated by Israel’s control of Gaza.

The report highlights a $1.2 billion (R21bn) cloud computing contract that Israel awarded to Google and Amazon in 2021 called Project Nimbus, claiming that they “stepped in with critical cloud and AI infrastructure,” after Israel’s internal military cloud overloaded in the wake of the Hamas attacks.

Amazon declined to comment. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Last week, the US Mission to the United Nations called on the secretary general of the UN to condemn Albanese’s activities and remove her from her role, reiterating a request it made earlier this year opposing the renewal of her appointment.

Google has sought to publicly distance itself from Israel’s national security agencies, but The Post reported in January that documents inside the company’s cloud division showed staff directly helping the country’s Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces access AI technology after the October 7 attacks.

In February, the company dropped a pledge not to use AI technology for weapons or surveillance from its ethical guidelines for the technology around AI. The broad guidelines, first issued in 2018 after employee protests against Google’s military contracts, promise to pursue responsible AI that aligns with “widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

Some tech companies have cracked down on employee activism and political dissent following worker protests for doing business with the Israeli government.

After Google fired some workers in 2024 for protesting its cloud contract with Israel, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a company memo that employees should not use their workplace to “fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”

Brin’s comment on the AI forum, named GDM Hot Goss in reference to Google DeepMind, followed a message from an AI research engineer who appeared dismayed by the report’s findings but noted much of Google’s AI investment focused on its virtual assistant app, Gemini. “The only bright spot here is that we’re spending all of our time and money on Gemini and not anything more useful for genocide,” screenshots show.

WASHINGTON POST