Cables of Resistance: “This is not an info-conference, it is a rallying cry!”
Last month our Advocacy Director, Emmanuelle, travelled to Berlin to join the Cables of Resistance (1, 2) movement conference against Big Tech. Across three days of workshops, talks and discussions, we connected with tech workers, campaigners, academics and members of the public to stand against the “technocratic-authoritarian restructuring of our societies”, in favour of “radically democratic, socially and environmentally just” futures (3). The depth and breadth of presentations and workshops at the conference - from discussions of raw materials to labour to militarisation - demonstrated the myriad ways that technology impacts us ecologically, materially and socially. And it also affirmed that the fight against digital technologies requires interconnected paths of resistance, as well as:
“broader coalitions and a new internationalism opposed to all forms of war - in the favelas, in the townships, in Sudan, in Palestine, of migrants and the poor.”(4)
At the same time, being in Berlin for a conference on justice and resistance was confronting and challenging. We know that Berlin has more police per capita than New York City (5), and we are aware of the violence that organisers standing against genocide have been met with by German police (6). It is also a place where some of us in the Glitch team have personally experienced racism, and travelling through the airport we were faced with the new requirement for non-EU citizens to provide our biometric data (7). We are reminded of the surveillance that is meted out in the context of border violence, as well as the relative ease in which some of us can travel as a result of the passports we hold.
The alt-right, disinformation and anti-Blackness
It felt pertinent that Glitch presented work on the digital threats to democracy posed by the alt-right, disinformation and anti-Blackness. Here we discussed the role that internet technologies, governance and Imperial power play in the spread of misogynistic and anti-immigrant discourses. Participants shared numerous examples - from the United States to Poland - that demonstrated how tech platform affordances operate in pursuit of ethno-nationalist white supremacy.
We asked how contemporary forms of fascism have shifted the terrain of our opposition, and what opportunities we have at the local, domestic and global level to resist these violences. One participant spoke about the rise of online trends encouraging young people to gather en masse in public spaces, and how this was being weaponised by the right to frame particular areas (such as in London) as unsafe. We discussed the strategies to equip communities to push back against these racist narratives, as well as considered the prevalence of these trends in the context of closing youth spaces. And we used the critical social and theoretical thought that is Black Feminism(s) to consider what this ideology makes possible for upholding life-affirming alternatives to tech-centric solutions, which don’t rely on criminal legal frameworks that exacerbate harm.
Artificial intelligence and the facilitation of war
The discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) systems and cloud infrastructure used to facilitate apartheid and in war - from Lebanon, to Iran, Gaza and Ukraine - were particularly sobering. The AI system deployed by the Israeli military, Lavender, ranks almost every individual in the Gaza strip on how “likely” they appear to be a militant. Another system, literally called “Where’s Daddy?” tracks when a “suspected militant” is at home with their family in order to strike (8). In this context, whether there are “humans in the loop” and whether these systems achieve their stated goals is, according to one of the panellists, a “moral red herring”: taking issue with the ‘precision’ or the justness of ‘target strikes’ is arguably a distraction from the horrors of violence meted out across all of Gaza (9).
The collusion between Big Tech and the military industrial complex is one that has never been so lucrative. In Project Nimbus - a $1.2B USD contract between Amazon and Google that provides cloud computing to the Israeli Government - the deal stipulates that it is forbidden for Google and Amazon to end the contract due to public pressure (10). Although Google Cloud customers must abide by the company’s terms of services and acceptable use policy, which expressly forbids for their products to be used “to violate the legal rights of others, or engage in ‘violence that can cause death, serious harm, or injury’” (11), the specificity of the terms they have agreed to as part of Nimbus, means they, as the service providers, are not bound to this in this context (12). It also involves what is known as a ‘Winking Mechanism’ whereby if they are required to hand over data by, say, a regulator, they can tip off the Israeli government, sidestepping legal orders which would otherwise gag them from doing so (13).
The role of workers in resisting Big Tech
While contracts are written in ways that might lead us to question the efficacy of demanding tech companies change their behaviours and systems, we heard from the organising group No Tech for Apartheid about the workers collectively refusing to be complicit, and the possibility of shifting power in the workplace (14).
Similarly, Nawi Collective’s discussion on the “undignified work of keeping the internet clean” which is deliberately hidden from view from users, pointed to pan-African feminism as a frame to analyse how Black women’s lives are shaped by power. They encouraged us to question: why does this digital labour end up being done in the Global South? What same patterns of exploitation and extraction proliferate? Whose labour is sustaining global value chains? Whose body carries society, and who profits? (15) Capitalism’s restructuring of the (tech) shop floor intentionally disconnects workers from the products (and targets) of their labour, making resistance harder to construct. This makes Unions, and third spaces to organise so vital, and we all have a part to play in ensuring they exist (join a union!).
Other workshops were imaginative offerings exploring what an alternative timeline of technological and political history might have led us to if small tech organisations developed 20 years ago. This left us wondering: if our vision is to make Big Tech obsolete, how crucial must it be that we include workers across the supply chain in our organising, working with them to imagine what comes next?
Challenging AI hype and the political obsession with ‘growth’
Colleagues at the conference encouraged us to think about applying principles of degrowth - a critique of the ideology of eternal growth as a measure of progress - to digital tech (16). In particular, with technosolutionist approaches to decarbonisation, practitioners reminded us not to overlook environmental destruction, resource consumption and human rights abuses that underpin and are often invisibilised in so-called ‘clean’ technology production (17).
For instance, elements like cobalt and lithium are essential for the green transition. But the extraction of these resources go hand in hand with the exploitation of local populations, causing water scarcity, leading to water pollution, and creating conflicts. Case in point: mining is one of the most dangerous sectors for environmental and land defenders across the globe (18).
If we think back to the UK — while the UK Government relies on AI as the answer to society’s problems (and the government’s massive debt) — this lens provides us with more confidence to resist growth as the solution and dissipate Big Tech's grip on power.
We are grateful to the Cables of Resistance team for facilitating a convening where we can seed and sow new grounds for solidarity and resistance. We look forward to continuing to apply these learnings to our domestic work on internet technologies in the information ecosystem.
To read more about the conference, we encourage you to check out their website here. And maybe — we’ll see you there next year!
Endnotes
(Title citation): Cables of Resistance, Opening Panel: Movement Power Against Big Tech. April 10 2026
Cables of Resistance Manifesto
Cables of Resistance Panel, Military Big Tech. April 12 2026
Justice Collective, Shifting Funds from the Police to the People: Rethinking Berlin’s Budget Priorities. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6124ccb23f114835709cc1d5/t/693a8069ca1ed3363738c47e/1765441641564/Justice+Collective+Shifting+Funds+from+the+Police+to+the+People+2025.pdf
United Nations, UN experts urge Germany to halt criminalisation and police violence against Palestinian solidarity activism. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-urge-germany-halt-criminalisation-and-police-violence-against
Cait Kelly, The Guardian, Europe’s new biometric border checks: what do non-EU travellers need to know? https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/oct/07/europe-new-biometric-border-checks-what-do-non-eu-travellers-need-to-know
Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine, ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza.ttps://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
Cables of Resistance Panel, Automated war-crimes powered by Big Tech – why and how to resist. April 12 2026
Shoshanna Solomon, The Times of Israel, Israel signs deal for cloud services with Google, Amazon. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-signs-deal-for-cloud-services-with-google-amazon/
Billy Perrigo, Time, Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel. https://time.com/6964364/exclusive-no-tech-for-apartheid-google-workers-protest-project-nimbus-1-2-billion-contract-with-israel/
Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham, Revealed: Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/29/google-amazon-israel-contract-secret-code
Ibid
Cables of Resistance Panel, Automated war-crimes powered by Big Tech – why and how to resist. April 12 2026
Cables of Resistance Panel, Our bodies - Our Data - Our Choice: Everybody’s Future. April 11 2026
Cables of Resistance Panel, Tech & Degrowth: imagining the small tech we want. April 12 2026
Cables of Resistance Panel, Supply Chain Panel: Destruction and Resistance from Mine to Disposal. April 11 2026
Natural Resource Governance Institute, Digging Into the Problem: How corruption facilitates socioenvironmental, human rights, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights harms in the mining sector. https://resourcegovernance.org/publications/digging-into-the-problem