Amazon shareholder resolution targets AI work with Israel, DHS

Matt Day, Bloomberg News on Dec 15, 2025

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Amazon.com Inc.’s business ties with Israel’s military and the US Department of Homeland Security are the focus of a shareholder proposal demanding that the company investigate whether such contracts comply with its responsible AI policies.

Filed by American Baptist Home Mission Societies and reviewed by Bloomberg, the resolution asks Amazon’s board to identify “instances of misalignment” between its internal standards and sales of artificial intelligence and cloud services.

The resolution, which could be voted on at Amazon’s annual meeting in May, cites the legal and reputational risks posed by Amazon’s contracts with the Israeli government and the DHS.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the resolution.

Microsoft Corp., Amazon’s Seattle-area neighbor and cloud-computing rival, has battled protests from employees and activists in the last year over its ties to the Israeli military, amid the country’s war in Gaza. After press reports revealed that Microsoft servers held recordings of phone calls intercepted from Palestinian territories, the company booted those workloads from its servers. It continues to face calls for a broader breakup with Israeli customers.

Amazon Web Services, the largest seller of rented data storage and processing power, hasn’t experienced that sort of employee insurgency. But the company, along with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, has been the target of periodic protests for its role in Project Nimbus, a cloud-computing platform built for Israeli government agencies.

An Amazon employee was fired earlier this year after taking to the company’s internal slack channels, and, later, handing out fliers at its Seattle headquarters to criticize that engagement. The company said his actions violated policy, including statements intended to “threaten, intimidate, coerce or interfere with” senior leaders and colleagues.

Biometric data

The shareholder resolution, citing accusations that DHS units arbitrarily detained people, violated people’s privacy, free speech and due process rights, notes that the agency uses a biometric and biographic information database hosted on AWS.

Thirty investors who collectively hold at least $59 million in Amazon shares backed the resolution as of last week’s deadline for interested co-filers to signal their support, said Aaron Acosta, a program director with Investor Advocates for Social Justice, which coordinated the push. They include a mix of faith-based investors, family offices, asset managers, pension plans and individual shareholders, he said.

Amazon’s responsible AI guidelines tout a commitment to fairness, privacy, security, safety and transparency. “Despite this approach, Amazon continues to sell to and maintain contracts with entities engaged in rights-violating applications of its AI and related technologies, suggesting misalignment between its policies and practice,” the resolution says.

Shareholder resolutions, which are nonbinding, rarely garner a majority of votes. But they’re a signal of public and investor sentiment that sometimes help spur changes in corporate policy. Amazon in the past has pledged to consider diverse board candidates and conducted a racial equity audit of its workforce after shareholder pressure.