Protesters break into Microsoft data center site in Amsterdam

Protesters have broken into a construction site of a new Microsoft data center in Amsterdam this morning. Members of the Geef Tegengas group helped organize the protest against the construction of three 85-meter data center towers in the outskirts of Amsterdam.

Reuters reports that around 100 people made it into the construction site, with some scaling a crane to place a “fuck AI” banner. Protesters also unfurled a “Microsoft powers genocide” banner on the construction site, and chanted “Microsoft has got to go” and “free Palestine.”

Opposition to the new data center in Amsterdam comes more than a year after the city banned new data centers until 2030, after a temporary stop that was announced at the end of 2023. Microsoft will be the sole tenant of this new data center, and the project is proceeding as it was planned as far back as 2016, before a ban was put in place. The site, being built by British developer Pure Data Centres, has also managed to navigate some loopholes to reach the construction stage.

The protests over Microsoft’s data center site in Amsterdam comes in the same week that activists staged a mock Israeli military checkpoint outside a Microsoft data center in Dublin on Tuesday, part of a wave of data center protests across Europe. Earlier this week, voters across the US also rejected unrestrained development of data centers. AI data centers are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about the impact on their communities.

Microsoft also abandoned the UK’s largest data center project last month, after local electricity grid officials said the site won’t be supplied with power until the 2030s. The software maker has also faced a wave of protests from former employees over the past year. Microsoft’s 50th anniversary party was interrupted by employees protesting the use of Microsoft’s technologies in Israel’s war against Hamas, with one calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a “war profiteer.“

A Microsoft employee also disrupted the company’s Build developer conference last year, interrupting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote. Months later, Microsoft fired two employee protesters who occupied its president’s office.