Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Artnet MAY 21, 2025 - by Brian Boucher

BRIAN ENO CALLS OUT MICROSOFT FOR SUPPORTING THE ISRAELI MILITARY

The musician and artist who composed the Windows 95 startup chime is donating his fee to help victims of the war in Gaza.

If you booted up a computer that ran on Windows 95 back in the Bill Clinton administration, you experienced a work of sound art by English musician, artist, and activist Brian Eno. The familiar chime, lasting just over six seconds, was a micro-composition that went against the grain of some of his best-known works, such as the sprawling compositions on records like 1978's Ambient 1: Music For Airports, which lent its name to ambient music, a genre that he famously said should be "as ignorable as it is interesting."

Now this member of music royalty, who has lent his producing skills to the Talking Heads and U2, and collaborated with giants like David Bowie, is using his platform to call out Microsoft, the computer giant that commissioned the Windows theme, for supporting the Israeli Defense Force. Israel has waged a brutal military campaign in Gaza since the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023; in December, Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.

In an open letter titled "Not in My Name," posted to his 280,000 Instagram followers, Eno said that the chime, back then, "represented a gateway to a promising technological future." He wrote that he enjoyed his work with the company, but now says: "I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war."

Eno pointed to a May 15 blog post by Microsoft responding to concerns among employees and the public that its Azure and A.I. technologies "have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza." The company acknowledged that it provides the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) with software, professional services, Azure cloud services, and Azure A.I. services, including language translation.

"Based on our review, including both our internal assessments and external review, we have found no evidence that Microsoft's Azure and A.I. technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our A.I. Code of Conduct," read the post, which also acknowledged that Microsoft "provided limited emergency support to the Israeli government in the weeks following October 7, 2023, to help rescue hostages." The company has not, it said, provided the types of surveillance and operations that have been the subject of employees' concerns.

Eno is calling bullshit on these technical defenses.

Microsoft's services, he wrote, "support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organizations, the United Nations experts, and increasing numbers of governments from around the world, as genocidal. The collaboration between Microsoft and the Israeli government and army is no secret and involves the company's software being used in lethal technologies with 'funny' names like 'Where's Daddy?' (guidance systems for tracking Palestinians in order to blow them up in their homes)."

He went on to call the company complicit in "systematic ethnic cleansing."

"If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes," he wrote, "you inevitably become complicit in those crimes."

Software companies, Eno continued, often have more power today than governments, which brings ethical responsibilities Accordingly, he called on Microsoft "to suspend all services that support any operations that contribute to violations of international law."

Eno said he will donate the fee he received for the Windows 95 chime to "helping victims of the attack on Gaza," concluding, "If a sound can signal a real change then let it be this one."

Eno published a book, What Art Does, this year in collaboration with Dutch artist Bette Adriaanse. All proceeds from the work will go towards Earth Percent, an organization that pushes funds from the music industry towards green causes, and The Heroines! Movement, a global female empowerment non-profit. He also co-founded the Hard Art collective to bring together artists, scientists, designers, activists and others to address the twin crises of climate and democracy. Eno is now crediting the Earth as a songwriter on his releases, with the planet's earnings going to his climate charity EarthPercent.

Eno is the subject of a documentary, Gary Hustwit's Eno, which Artnet News national critic Ben Davis reviewed favorably, calling it a "philosophical movie" with "strength and generousness" of ideas.