The Crimeson’s Top Six Companies to Watch Out For

This was the cover story for The Crimeson’s No Tech For Genocide issue. It was distributed on October 18, 2024, at a career fair with the CIA and Bank of America in attendance.

Whether you’re reading this issue of The Crimeson at the career fair or elsewhere, keep your eyes peeled for the human rights violators listed here. They may try to recruit you so that they can exploit your labor as they profit off the death and displacement of Palestinians. These companies and institutions are involved at every level of Israeli colonial violence — from investing in arms dealers, to building the weapons and technology Israel relies upon to carry out its genocide, to promoting speech that seeks to justify and conceal their war crimes.

These employers need the labor of people like you for their deadly operations to function, but they would never tell you that. They need you to buy into their facade of diversity and inclusion so that they can use your time and skills to annihilate our world. This is not to say that we can ever totally opt out of our complicity under capitalism — for one, we are Harvard students; through our tuition dollars and the institutional privileges we reap, we are complicit in Harvard’s support of a settler colonial state seeking the elimination of Palestinians. But this complicity requires that we act. We may find ourselves within oppressive systems, but we refuse to comply with them: They will not dictate what harm and devastation we must accept; they will not steal our voice or sense of justice.

So, before you sign that recruitment offer, ask your recruiter the questions no one will ask: What is this company’s relationship to Israel? Does it invest actively or offer ideological support? What are its plans to divest from these relations in the face of Israel’s ongoing genocide? If there are none, how many more Palestinians need to be murdered before they will “rethink their business model” or challenge the sacredness of endless profit over all life on Earth? You have the right to know, you have a responsibility to your own moral conscience, and, most of all, you have the obligation to fight for a liberated world.

We call on all Harvard students to withhold their labor from the following companies until they disclose all investments in Israel, divest from them, and reinvest in Palestinian life and liberation.

At the October 18 Diversity Opportunities Fair:

Bank of America

Bank of America was a crucial part of a $500 million loan to Elbit, the largest Israeli arms company, which produces more than 80% of Israel’s land and air equipment, including assassination drones, the armored bulldozers used to demolish civilian homes, and the rocket artillery currently destroying Gaza and Lebanon. Not content to just make the weapons, Bank of America, along with other American mega-banks, has underwritten billions of dollars worth of Israeli government bonds in the past year, helping finance the ongoing genocide of Gaza.

CIA

Despite the U.S. government’s perpetually professed intention of “spreading democracy” around the globe, the Central Intelligence Agency has long been the covert enforcer of the only real American foreign policy — visiting overt violence upon civilian populations in the name of American hegemonic power and profit.

Between assassination, torture, blackmail, unlawful surveillance, the CIA has done it all, including against U.S. citizens. CIA operations promoting “regime change” have armed death squads, plotted the assassination of democratically-elected leaders, disseminated propaganda, abetted violent military coups, and much more. A similarly inexhaustible list is that of the places around the world where the CIA is responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people: Chile, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Chad, Fiji, Nicaragua, Panama, Libya. The list goes on.

Right now, virtually every device in existence is compromised by the CIA’s cyberintelligence program: From iPhones to Windows laptops to Samsung televisions, if it turns on, the CIA can turn it into a remote listening device and access anything on it. If hired by them, you can look forward to spying on civilians in their private moments, spreading disinformation at will, and assisting in assassinations and murders across the globe.

Other major recruiters:

Nvidia

Nvidia is not just the world’s leader in the chip revolution, with a market cap of over $3.3 trillion; it is also a leader in weaponizing AI for the military-industrial complex. It is currently building an AI supercomputer for the Pentagon think tank MITRE that will be used to develop surveillance and infiltration technology to feed the imperialist mission of the American military. Nvidia operates in stolen Palestinian land, where it has also built a supercomputer for the Israeli government called “Israel-1,” which is being used to maintain the Israeli economy as it commits genocide in Gaza.

Alphabet (Google)

Alphabet’s workplace culture may seem great, but you definitely won’t find the job security you’re looking for. Alphabet has fired dozens of its employees for opposing its development of Project Nimbus, an Israeli military cloud computing program that provides the IOF with facial recognition and other AI surveillance features. Nimbus has been linked to Project Lavender and “Where’s Daddy?” two other IOF programs that target Palestinians and fire weapons at them using facial recognition. By design, “Where’s Daddy? launches bombs only when targets are at home with their family.

Meta (Facebook)

If you’re going to work for Meta to help the world become “better connected,” as their motto says, you may find you’re doing just the opposite. Meta works with the Israeli military’s Cyber Unit to remove and suppress pro-Palestinian speech on Facebook. According to Meta’s own accountability watchdog, Meta’s actions towards Palestinian free speech “have had an adverse human rights impact ... on the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression.” Facebook isn’t just putting a lid on human rights but also accelerating violence; Meta’s promotion of content from Myanmar’s military dictatorship helped facilitate the genocide of the Rohingya.

BlackRock

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, and it didn’t get there via pacifism. It is one of the largest investors in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and many gun manufacturers, helping to ensure that the supply of weapons fueling the Israeli genocide in Gaza and other conflicts flows continuously. BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, is a major supporter of the Israeli campaign against the Palestinian people, saying that the death of Gazan civilians is not the same as the death of Israelis, and he encouraged NYU to impose harsh punishments on students peacefully protesting the war.