She requests that the Board "commission a report assessing the implications of siting Microsoft cloud datacenters in countries of significant human rights concern, and the Company’s strategies for mitigating these impacts."
She specifically cites the 2024 completion of a Microsoft datacenter in Saudi Arabia, citing a "State Department report [that] details the highly restrictive Saudi control of all internet activities and pervasive government surveillance, arrest, and prosecution of online activity."
The Board opposes the proposal because it believes Microsoft already discloses extensive disclosures on key human rights risks, and has an independent assessment each year of how they manage risks and its commitment to protecting freedom of expression and user privacy. They also re-iterate the need to comply with local laws and legally binding requests for customer data.
The proposal is non-binding, so the Board doesn't have to act on it even in the unlikely event it gets majority support (ESG proposals rarely do, especially in this environment). In practice many Boards do choose to act on majority-supported non-binding shareholder proposals, though, because many shareholders will vote against directors the following year if they don't.
Where can one find those extensive disclosures, especially for year 2024/2025? I'd love to hear how Microsoft are protecting freedom of expression and user privacy in a country like Saudi Arabia, which has a track record of excelling at whatever you'd call the opposite of those two things.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/hum...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/rep...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/rep...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/gov...
Every step along the way, Microsoft picks "key" areas/terms/subjects, so they're only covering a few human rights that they convinced themselves are most important. Within each covered item, you'll find a couple of paragraphs that explain why complying can be problematic if they want to make more money, and a few lines of manager speak and links to "projects" and "partnerships" that vaguely promise to accomplish vague goals on a vague timeline with no mention of what happens if they fail their goals.
Countries and specific risks are not named. Microsoft may as well be helping Netanyahu organize optimal genocide directly and they'll still be able to barf up some manager speak to explain why they're trying real hard, honest!
Their statements are full of talk like:
> Our commitment to the rule of law carries with it the legal obligation to comply with applicable local law. When we face requests from governments to provide user data or remove content, we work to respect the rights to privacy and freedom of expression by assessing whether the government requests are valid, legally binding, compliant with applicable law, and consistent with international laws, principles, and norms on human rights and the rule of law.
(in other words: they'll just ask legal if they should comply with government requests and that's supposed to protect your freedom of speech)
And gems like:
> The GNI Board concluded that we met our commitment to GNI to make “good-faith efforts to implement the GNI Principles with improvement over time.
(in other words: we've managed to convince the GNI board that we really care)
In addition the Saudi's Armed the gnocidal Jajaweed/RSF (again with US weaponry) to fight in Yemen, the same RSF who have now creating mayhem and collapse in the Sudan.
The question is, given these encyclopaedic statements about corporate responsibility, for what exactly do they count for? when Microsoft is happy to engage with this regime which:
which arms and supplies a group known to practice mass genocide/ janjaweed /rsf sponsored by Saudis * a government which practices mass starvation and invasions of it neighbour * is know for torturing and dismembering dissidents alive
What do all those links mean if it allows this?
Your geopolitical insinuation is interestingly monofaceted, however. Ignoring the many domestic pressures at the time which are relevant (such as vote share in arms-producing districts), the 2016 action by the US (1) acted as a small hedge against any gains in regional power by China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Oman, Russia, Turkey or the United Kingdom (such as market share or diplomatic point-scoring) while (2) simultaneously implying to MBS that, in the short term (2-5 years), he was on his own with respect to Iran and (3) moderately reinforcing the carefully cultivated political aesthetic of U.S. impulsivity and violence.
All three of those modest goals were achieved and were later undermined by unforced errors elsewhere. Alternatively, one could consider that those goals were achieved to build up a reserve of political capital that could be expended to permit the unforced errors elsewhere.
Another example that was written almost exactly the same, when a shareholder asked what Caterpillar were doing to avoid their machinery being used for deforestation in at risk locations.
If you’ve heard of activist investors, this is their battle ground. Buying enough of a company, tabling votes and then getting their preferred board candidates and shareholder votes put through.
Norway's SWF has become increasingly politicized [0] due to the death of the center and the rise of the populist left and right, which is a common issue for any SWF in a Western Democracy. The same thing happened with CalPERS, the Alaska Permanent Fund, Australia's Future Fund, and the Ontario Teacher's Fund as well because these funds are not firewalled off from politicians, thus making them ripe for a populist conversion into ideologically activist funds (this is a both sides problems - as can be seen in California [1] and Florida's [2] case).
A major reason why the gold standard of SWFs are funds like Singapore's Temasek, Japan's GPIF, or South Korea's KIC is because they work hard to remain technocratic in nature and single minded about their goal: provide an economic base for self sufficiency for their citizens should adverse economic crises hit, along with the economic cushion to underwrite social security and welfare programs.
At some point for an SWF, too much "democracy" just becomes a hinderance to the underlying mission, which in Norway's case, building a SWF to support Norwegian state pensions in perpetuity once their oil wealth dries up.
Complaining about "woke/ESG investments" (like in Florida) or stunting about "human rights abuses" (like in CalPERS or Norway's case) doesn't actually shift the needle one way or the other because most other institutional investors (public and private) are much more single-minded about their aims, and a number of funds and LPs have begun to reject investments from politicized SWFs because of the headaches associated with a fund that wasn't supported to be an activist fund dealing with an internal conflict over becoming one or not.
SWFs are a fundamental weapon in a government's economic arsenal, and using them in a non-strategic but politically popular manner leads to you only stealing the future from your kids - as can be seen with the woes the Alaska Permanent Fund now faces due to populist promising of constantly raising the Alaska dividend.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/norway-el...
[1] - https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_55faf935-...
[2] - https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-ron-desan...
E.g. the recent tightening of rules over investment in Israel saw the centre-left social democrat led government criticised by parties across the political spectrum.
This is common for Norway, where there often is broad, cross-party consensus on these things.
What I'm saying is the primary goal of a sovereign wealth fund is to invest in developing an economic cushion for it's home country no matter the cost. This is why the GPIF and KIC heavily invested in China and each other despite both counties fighting trade wars amongst themselves. And similar to how Temasek heavily invested in Malaysia in the 1980s-90s despite virulently anti-Singaporean and anti-Chinese sentiment in Malaysia back then.
In all honesty, it's people like you like you who have lead politicans on both the right and the left to realize that turning SWFs into a political football yields electoral wins while ignoring the long-term impact it has.
And this specific case in the article is about Microsoft's investment in KSA which is unrelated to the Israel-Gaza Conflict. And in all honesty, when the far right end up winning in Norway in 2-3 election cycles, they'll do similarly stupid shenanigans with the GPF.
Non-experts do not have to have a say in every single nitty gritty decision. At some point, governance needs to be left to the administrators. And not everything needs to be a moral battle or culture war.
Primary? Yes. But Norway's fund explicitly and consistently claims that it cares about environment and societal effects of it's investments. Everything else you say follows from this premise, but Norway's fund stubbornly refuses to invest "no matter the cost".
>In all honesty, it's people like you like you who have lead politicans on both the right and the left to realize that turning SWFs into a political football yields electoral wins while ignoring the long-term impact it has.
In all honesty, people like you like you - who believe it's morally OK to support any atrocity as long as it makes money - make the world a progressively worse place by ignoring long-term global impact of those decisions.
Obviously there has to be some nuance there. It wouldn't be a good idea for Norway to dump their entire SWF into the Russian economy even if their economic analysis showed that this was the most prudent thing to do with the money.
And national security is absolutely intertwined with the operation of a SWF, but these are very nuanced discussions that cannot be decided willy nilly based on electoral whims.
These are complex and nuanced topics that cannot be resolved via simple populist retorts, which only puts strategy at the backseat at the expense of electoral short-termism.
And this is why examples like Florida's "anti-woke investment" law which lead Florida to miss out on a significant amount of green and renewable investment opportunities that equally red Georgia took advantage of, and California's complete opposite "banning of all greenhouse gas adjacent industries" lead CalPERS to take a significant beating despite similarly progressive funds in Colorado and Oregon continuing to invest in ONG adjacent sectors.
You have to scroll down a bit to page 83 to get to the one the article is referencing.
> Microsoft management had recommended shareholders voted against the motion.
Ok, cool, but what about the reasons for those actions? What kind of lazy journalism is this? I guess it's nice that we know that something is happening, but what about reaching out to people and asking them why so people can actually understand? For the love of Adam Smith, at least mention the involved countries!
Having a large shareholder indicate they will go with a shareholder proposal is the newsworthy part. It indicates there’s something that should be being addresssed by the board which isn’t already, which is publicly embarrassing for them.
I helped build a system that would estimate the vote for these large institutional investors because if a board tables a vote and a institutional investor votes against it, it’s a really bad look.
Saudi Arabia
Funny how most of the comments in this submission assumes it's about Israel, telling in more ways than one. This is why reporting has to be accurate :)
These are govt contracts and a lot of them have strict data sovereignty restrictions. Google has a big data center there for the exact reason to mop up this work. They also have an AI lab there.
Semitic
of, relating to, or constituting a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic language family that includes Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Amharic
Saudi Arabia is arabic so technically they're correct?
It also doesn't specifically refer to the State of Israel, but to Jews everywhere.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240424201226/https://www.redha...
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Palantir are all providing cloud and AI services to Israel which it uses it the genocide in Gaza and the continued military occupation of Palestine.
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/09/microsoft...
- https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveilla...
- https://afsc.org/newsroom/unprecedented-investor-action-dema...
- https://countercurrents.org/2025/11/microsoft-ignites-protes...
That's what I thought initially too, but seems this is about a different human rights issue, particularly in Saudi Arabia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097244
Unless Microsoft is directly supplying the software which surveils instead of just “general purpose compute” this isn’t as big as Norway would want you to believe. They can just terminate the accounts as violations of terms of service and claim that millions of users use azure cloud to serve websites and content, the dance will go on.
I don’t think punishing the steel maker for a gun maker who sold it to a distributor who then sold it to a nut job should be liable for the nut job. This is the same for tech. Sub contractors for Israel government got Azure hosting and subbed it out to Palantir to plant their platform inside (gun maker) and then sold it to Israel (nut job).
Palantir on the other hand…
They did: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/09/25/update-...
> First, we do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades. This is why we explained publicly on August 15 that Microsoft’s standard terms of service prohibit the use of our technology for mass surveillance of civilians.
If they want Microsoft not to provide "general compute" to the Israeli army then they can try to get a majority of Microsft owners to go along with it.
I think that's not the same as pressure on Microsoft from the outside.
It’s faith-based warfare disguised as a terrorist fight and the AI is in full force flooding feeds of aid when the reality is it’s a god damn wasteland.
There are Jews of every color - so feeding this as a white vs brown fight is incorrect.
I don’t belong to (nor believe) in any of the 3 religions in this fight. But historically the other two (Christians and Muslims) have been very genocidal.
The whole situation is so fucked no one wants to touch it. Netanwacko is even asking for a pardon for his crimes. Like everyone took DMT and no one cares.
If you want to dispute that claim, fine; reasonable people can disagree about the definition of "genocide" and about what standard of proof is necessary. However, reducing the opposing opinion to "online radicals" is inaccurate.
In Sweden's case, however, even pre-war they were already exporting 40% of Germany's demand for raw ore which increased to 50% during wartime iirc. So Germany already had the infrastructure necessary to process the raw materials into steel, and at scale scale beforehand.
In modern warfare, those same foundaries would make easy aerial targets due to the massive heat output from the bessimer process required to make steel from raw ore.
This entire thing is just political showboating. I mean feel free to not buy food and fuel.
(Human rights are common law.)
Palantir on the otherhand is a well known defense contractor and its stock price is arguably propped up by the US Department of Defen -- I mean WAR -- having an infinite budget.
Don't be licking Thiel and Karp's boots.
Nobody thinks that, because it's ridiculous. This is a false equivalence. Isolated crimes are inevitable, and impossible to solve with any single thing.
But when it comes to genocide, you can stop or at least limit it by going after the suppliers who equip the group with the tools to carry it out. Microsoft is one such supplier, and they know exactly what they're doing. If our government isn't going to do something, an activist shareholder is a decent alternative.
The issue is that they were caught not following their practices, and then lying about it. So the shareholders are asking that they produce a report about whether they are following their own human rights principles.
And Satya is resisting it, because it is very clear that they are not following them, as workers [1] have been calling out for years now. Many leaked documents have shown that Microsoft actually embeds employees directly with the IDF and makes millions in service contracts with them. [2]
[1] https://noazureforapartheid.com/ [2] https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-cu...
Are you sure it's not the other way around?
Regardless of the part of the world, corruption happens when the right price gets negotiated.
It can be money, a favour, need to help someone in need, needing to meet specific sales KPIs,...
it takes a lot of money and firepower to do what they’ve done to gaza. it is an affectation of enormous wealth and callousness against a nearly defenseless population
i will say though that sri lankans said that some of these tactics were pioneered against the tamil tigers in more recent history
As for targeting Palantir instead, boycott, divestment, and sanctions is most effective when it targets all the complicit players.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/norway...
HN does need a flag comment button
So this show is exactly what should happen in a democracy, isn't it?
Luckily, even if their MS investment goes to 0, it wouldn't be "sacrificing their pensions". Around 2.5% of the wealth fund is invested in MS, so it seems to line up pretty well with your "single digit percentage at most."
This was common in the entirety of Europe with their mass amnesia, where everyone was in the resistance, and the actual perpetrators were the germans or the "nazis", never the local men on the ground.
Now it is not surprising when Europe who has collectively created the myth of "someone else responsibility" is now working on pinpointing the blame for genocide to the Jews themselves, creating the final work of scapegoating jews as was a cultural tradition in the continent.
So when Jews are massacred in the land they fled to after your own police force deported them to death camps, and your own government stole their properties making them refugees, why not go for the final stroke?
I am also talking about the responsibility of such a nation whose entire state apparatus is successor to that government
That's why I think the Norwegians should look at their recent history to understand the difference between genocide and war, and invest their partially stolen money accordingly
I don't know about Norway specifically, but certainly it's silly when some modern French people claim "well actually, Vichy was an illegal regime, so this wasn't our ancestors' fault at all".
However, whether Norway (as a state) bears responsibility for the Holocaust is a totally separate question from whether Israel's treatment of Palestinians is justifiable, and what the present-day government of Norway should do about it.
I am saying that the term "genocide" that is thrown around very lightly seems to me as an attempt to erase the actual genocide by misappropriating it.
When european governments support this action this has everything to do with their actions in the holocaust and the two millennia of scapegoating jews
essentially what they are saying is, remember the time when we shipped all our citizens of a certain race to the gas chambers for no reason? that is morally equivalent to you fighting a defacto state that slaughtered a thousand of your civilians, raped and kidnapped babies. this is so similar we will actually use the same word for that
> that is morally equivalent to you fighting a group that slaughtered a thousand of your civilians, raped and kidnapped babies
Public opinion in Western countries does not reject Israel's right to attempt to defeat Hamas. As far as I know, all mainstream Western politicians (perhaps outside of the far left) view Hamas as terrorists and think a military response to the Oct. 7th attacks was justified.
What people disagree about is (1) to what extent Israel has taken actions that harm innocent, non-terrorist civilians (indiscriminate bombing, indefinite air and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, apartheid-like occupation of the West Bank, etc.) and (2) whether such actions are necessary to ensure safety from terrorists and can therefore be considered justifiable collateral damage.
I appreciate that Israel's supporters would dispute the views of the anti-Israel camp on both of the above points. However, it is not accurate to claim that people equate the bare act of responding militarily to Hamas in a targeted way with genocide.
For a quick understanding of the situation it is easy to see international organizations like the UN human rights council which disproportionally condemn Israel while are free to elect a chair from countries like Iran, whose hobby of hanging gays from cranes is possibly one outlet of adherence to human rights. 174 condemnations for Israel this decade vs 10 for north korea, a country known to operate actual concentration camps
Generally this is a shift from scapegoating jews in national politics to scapegoating Israel in international one, or alternatively to scapegoat internal issues (see corruption cases in Spain, South Africa)
Regarding your opinions about Israel war being indiscriminate towards civilians, I mostly disagree, however this is not my point. My point is not the criticism of the effects of bombing in a dense urban zone (where civilian hostages were taken to, attacks came from, and popularly elected Hamas is entrenched in), but calling such attacks a genocide. These are so hyperbolic that another explanation must be found, and because we have a cultural history that is older than all nations of exactly such allegations, that is the most fitting explanation in my opinion
(For some reason, doing business with Saudi Arabia is not counted as evidence against the "Zionist", "genocide" etc. etc. narrative.)
Why would "Saudi Arabia treats workers badly" be evidence against the idea that Israel is committing genocide ?
Based on the podcast "Microsoft: Powering Israel’s Genocide? | Hossam Nasr," here are the main human rights issues alleged against Microsoft:
1. Complicity in Military Operations - The podcast claims Microsoft is a key tech provider for the Israeli military, specifically using the Azure cloud platform to run combat and intelligence activities. - It alleges Microsoft sells AI services (including OpenAI models) to military units like "Mamram," which are linked to automated targeting systems used to accelerate lethal strikes.
2. Surveillance and Infrastructure - Microsoft is accused of hosting roughly 13.6 petabytes of data used for mass surveillance. - The "Al-Munassiq" app, used by Palestinians to manage movement permits, reportedly runs on Azure and is described as a tool for collecting vast amounts of surveillance data. - The company reportedly sells technology directly to illegal settlements in the West Bank.
3. Internal Labor Rights & Suppression - The speaker alleges a double standard and discrimination against Palestinian and Arab employees. - Microsoft is accused of "weaponizing" HR policies to fire workers (including the podcast guest) for organizing vigils or protesting the company's military contracts.
4. Historical Context - The discussion references Microsoft's history of providing tech to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the US as part of a broader pattern of supporting "systems of oppression."
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A95asBbCNZo
Prompt: “ According to this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A95asBbCNZo
What are the main human rights issues of Microsoft?”
Used Gemini 3 (Thinking) via WebUI
If someone at the NWF is reading this, please take this into consideration. Let's start to take action against the fraud and grift, and try to make humanity a little better, one step at a time.
Thank you.
Is this poor performance due to this kind of active management?
Bonds (a safe investment) are usually at ~2%.
A conservatively allocated growth fund doing 6% is pret-t-y good.
Seems they're doing exactly what is expected of them, staying around the benchmark index, so that sounds pretty good:
> The fund has outperformed the benchmark index set by the Ministry of Finance by 0.24 percentage point since 1998.
Let's say Norway invested all the money into a wager on a football game, and they won, resulting in a 100% return. They'd be lucky, and they'd be idiots.
> Norway's $2 trillion wealth fund said on Sunday it would vote for a shareholder proposal at the upcoming Microsoft annual general meeting requiring for a report on the risks of operating in countries with significant human rights concerns.
The Norway sovereign wealth fund is a large pension fund holding the profits of exploiting their natural oil reserves. It’s not related to the EU.
1) A) Shareholder proposal bullied through via questionable means like buying votes from index-fund vote providers (or endowment/pension/wealth funds) that put other interests ahead of fiduciary interests. (and/or) B) Weak but expensive-to-fight lawsuit
2) But don't worry, we have a consulting arm that will do the reports for you. If you pay them, we can guarantee it satisfies the shareholder proposal, and we will drop the lawsuit.
Sometimes human rights, sometimes ADA, sometimes environmental, the playbook is basically the same.
And, yeah, if you're a >$tn company going into the EU, or even just giving out shares, I agree: consult lawyers :) sound advice. In fact they probably did.
On its face, I don't see a problem. If the situation is as insidious as you describe, I definitely agree with you. But then that's the story. Not TFA.
If Norway has an issue with Microsoft, they should sell their shares in MSFT. Considering they’re not doing that, they are being dramatic for drama’s sake.