05/03/2026
While 48 Leaders Meet in Yerevan, 142,000 Stories Wait
I'll be watching the European Political Community Summit from ParentsPlea.com.
That's where 142,000+ profiles live — not statistics, but full biographies: names, ages, photographs, causes of death, news sources documenting what happened, and the pleas of surviving family members who trusted us to keep their loved ones' stories from being erased. The majority are from Palestine, before and after October 7, 2023. Others from Iran. From US police brutality. From the wars the world pays attention to and the ones it doesn't.
On May 4, forty-eight heads of state and government will gather in Yerevan, Armenia, under the motto "Building the Future: Unity and Stability in Europe." António Costa, President of the European Council, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will co-chair. Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President, will attend. Mark Carney, Canada's Prime Minister, becomes the first non-European leader invited to participate.
The agenda, as described by the European Council, includes: democratic resilience, connectivity, economic security, and energy security.
What the agenda does not include — what it has never included across seven previous summits — is accountability for the technology infrastructure that has made modern warfare faster, more automated, and more lethal than any previous generation could have imagined.
That's the gap I'll be watching for. That's the silence I'll be documenting.
What "Building the Future" Actually Means
The European Political Community was established in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron proposed it as a forum for political coordination across 47 European nations — EU members and non-members alike — to address "issues of common interest" and strengthen "security, stability, and prosperity."
Those are good words. Important words. But words without specifics become whatever the speaker needs them to mean.
So let me be specific about what I'll be listening for when these leaders talk about building the future:
Whose future?
Built with which technologies?
And who profits when those technologies kill?
I ask these questions not as an outsider critic, but as someone who spent 25 years in the technology sector — working at startups, selling cloud computing, managing alliances at Amazon Web Services. I worked inside the machine until 2018. I watched how contracts got signed. I saw what happened to employees who raised ethical concerns. I know what "enterprise solutions" actually means when the enterprise is a military conducting operations in densely populated civilian areas.
I spent years documenting ethical concerns through a nonprofit called Ethics in Technology. By 2022, I had to shut it down. Not because the work wasn't important, but because I realized the problem wasn't a deficit of ethics that could be fixed with better corporate social responsibility statements. The problem was the absence of ethics, systemic and profitable, operating as the business model itself.
That's when I launched NoEthicsInBigTech.com.
The Systems They Won't Name
In my documentary film Forever Peace Now, I documented three AI weapons systems currently deployed in Gaza. Their names are Gospel, Lavender, and Where's Daddy.
Gospel is a mass target generation engine developed by Israel's Unit 8200. Before Gospel, Israeli intelligence analysts could produce approximately 50 targets in Gaza per year. With Gospel active, that number climbed to 100 targets per day. In the first weeks of the current war, the IDF claimed over 22,000 strikes, with up to 250 targets struck daily.
The humans reviewing Gospel's recommendations were not decision-makers. According to testimony from Israeli intelligence officers documented by +972 Magazine, they were rubber stamps — approving targets in as little as twenty seconds. One officer described it plainly: "a mass assassination factory."
Lavender operates differently. Where Gospel targets locations, Lavender targets people. It assigned a probability score from 1 to 100 to virtually every adult Palestinian in Gaza, rating the likelihood each individual belonged to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. At the war's outset, Lavender had flagged up to 37,000 Palestinians as potential assassination targets.
The system's own architects admitted it carried a 10 percent error rate — meaning thousands of people marked for death were identified incorrectly. That error rate was considered acceptable.
Where's Daddy completed the system. It was designed to track individuals on the Lavender kill list and alert operators when those individuals entered their family homes at night — so that strikes could be timed to hit them while surrounded by their families.
The name itself tells you everything about the moral universe in which this technology was conceived.
These systems do not merely assist human decision-making. They have effectively displaced it. The human has been removed from the kill chain and replaced by a machine whose reasoning cannot be interrogated, whose errors cannot be audited in real time, and whose outputs are treated as authoritative.
The technology companies that built the foundational infrastructure enabling these systems — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir — are not neutral vendors providing cloud storage like they provide it to Netflix or Spotify.
Amazon and Google hold a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government known as Project Nimbus, providing the real-time data storage and AI processing power that underpins military targeting.
Palantir integrates intelligence streams from drones, satellites, and signals into a single operational picture used for precise targeting decisions.
Oracle provides the database backbone for mass surveillance data management.
Microsoft powers the cloud systems through which this intelligence is processed and coordinated.
These companies built the engine. They knew what it would be used for. Complicity is not an allegation. It is a description of the contractual relationship.
The ICC Moment That Changed Everything
Here's what makes the Yerevan summit particularly revealing:
While European leaders will discuss "connectivity" and "digital infrastructure" and "technological cooperation," several European governments are quietly walking away from the very companies providing the backbone of AI-enabled warfare.
The turning point came in February 2025.
After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. As a direct result, Khan's Microsoft email account was blocked. All 900 ICC staff members were banned from entering the United States. Khan had to switch to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider. The ICC described its work as being "paralyzed" by the Microsoft blockade.
Microsoft President Brad Smith denied the company had suspended services. But the damage was done. In October 2025, the ICC confirmed it was migrating away from Microsoft Office entirely, switching to OpenDesk — open-source software developed by Germany's Centre for Digital Sovereignty.
Germany's Schleswig-Holstein minister said it plainly: "The ICC case has demonstrated once more, unfortunately, how dependent institutions, governments and private companies are on proprietary systems."
That moment crystallized what European governments had been quietly acknowledging: If a judge trying to do their job can be locked out of their email by a decision made in Washington, then sovereignty is an illusion.
In April 2026, France announced it would move all government computers — 2.5 million civil servants' workstations — from Microsoft to Linux. The stated reason was not cost. It was sovereignty. French minister David Amiel said: "France can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control."
Denmark committed to replacing Microsoft Office 365 entirely. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein moved 30,000 government workplaces to Linux. Austria adopted a national charter on digital sovereignty, endorsed by all 27 EU member states.
The message from Europe is clear: If any country's policies displease the United States, they can face sanctions that weaponize American technology against them.
The Europe Paradox
So Europe is waking up to digital sovereignty as a security issue.
But here's the question I want those 48 leaders to answer:
If you're moving away from Microsoft because you don't trust American companies with your government's emails and spreadsheets, why are you still allowing those same companies — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir — to operate the infrastructure that powers targeting systems killing civilians in Gaza?
If sovereignty means protecting your data, doesn't it also mean protecting your values?
If the ICC can be paralyzed by a Microsoft email shutdown, what happens when those same companies decide which military operations to enable and which to obstruct based on Washington's geopolitical priorities?
The U.S. CLOUD Act makes this inevitable: American tech companies can be compelled by U.S. authorities to provide data stored anywhere in the world — including on servers physically located in Europe — without going through European courts, often with non-disclosure orders preventing the company from telling the customer.
European institutions using American cloud platforms are, in the view of multiple European data protection authorities, in ongoing structural breach of GDPR — not because of a specific incident, but because of the architecture itself.
Europe understands this for government emails.
Why doesn't Europe understand this for weapons systems?
Universal Jurisdiction: Every Nation in That Room Has It
Spain is not the only nation that can act.
Under the principle of universal jurisdiction — the legal doctrine that the most serious crimes against humanity can be prosecuted by any state, regardless of where the crimes occurred or the nationality of the perpetrators — every single nation attending the Yerevan summit has the authority to investigate and prosecute complicity in genocide and war crimes.
Spain has precedent. In 1998, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón issued an international arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet under universal jurisdiction. Pinochet was arrested in London. The case established that no leader — and no person who enables mass atrocity — is beyond the reach of international justice simply because their own country protects them.
But Canada can do this. France can do this. Germany can do this. Turkey can do this. Armenia can do this. Every nation where Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir maintain offices, data centers, assets, or executive travel can freeze those assets, issue arrest warrants, and demand accountability.
That's why I've launched a petition calling on the Spanish Government and Prosecutor's Office to investigate and prosecute executives at these five companies for complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity.
The petition is co-sponsored by RootsAction.org Education Fund and WorldBeyondWar.org, which represents over 100 affiliate organizations globally.
You can read and sign it here: ForeverPeaceNow.com/Petition
Currently, the petition has approximately 500 signatures. We need thousands. We need tens of thousands. We need enough documented public demand that the Spanish Prosecutor's Office — and prosecutors in every nation represented in Yerevan — has the political cover to act.
But the petition alone is not the goal. The goal is simultaneous multinational legal action. Spain can lead. Canada can follow. France, Germany, Turkey, Armenia — every nation in that room can open investigations. The pressure of coordinated prosecutions across multiple jurisdictions would not merely expose these companies. It would force the structural breakup that regulatory fines and antitrust cases have failed to achieve.
Those who sign the petition will receive a free online copy of my third book, currently completing edits: No Ethics In Big Tech: An Insider's Case Against Silicon Valley's War on Humanity — and the Fight to Make Them Pay.
What I'll Be Watching For
When António Costa and Nikol Pashinyan open the summit on May 4, I'll be listening for specific words:
Will anyone say "AI weapons systems"?
Will anyone name Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, or Palantir?
Will anyone connect "digital infrastructure" to the Gospel targeting system?
Will anyone mention that the same cloud platforms European governments are abandoning for sovereignty reasons are powering military operations that have killed over 30,000 children in Gaza?
Will anyone acknowledge that the ICC — an institution Europe claims to support — was paralyzed by the same American tech company that France just expelled from its government workstations?
I don't expect they will. These summits are designed for coordination, not confrontation. The format favors bilateral discussions, informal agreements, and carefully worded communiqués that satisfy everyone because they commit to nothing specific.
But the absence of these words — the silence on these systems — is itself documentation. It tells us that Europe's leaders believe they can build "unity and stability" while ignoring the technological infrastructure of mass killing that their own companies enable and their own governments license.
That silence will be broken.
Not by the summit. By the work that continues after it ends.
The Arc Is Long
ParentsPlea.com now documents over 142,000 deaths. Each profile includes:
Full name
Age
Photograph (where available)
Cause of death
Alleged responsible party
News sources documenting the death
Plea from surviving family member
We built this platform for three reasons:
First: If there is ever going to be judgment in a court of law, prosecutors need to identify victims and attach human testimony to the machinery they are prosecuting.
Second: If reparations are ever ordered, we need a registry of who was harmed in order to pay them.
Third: If there is ever going to be a memorial worthy of the name — not just a wall of numbers — we need complete biographies and personal stories.
The 48 leaders meeting in Yerevan will discuss the future. The 142,000+ profiles on ParentsPlea represent the present — the human cost of technologies deployed without accountability, sold without conscience, and protected by governments unwilling to enforce the jurisdiction they already possess.
The summit will end on May 5.
The EU-Armenia bilateral summit will follow.
Press releases will be issued. Agreements will be announced. Leaders will return to their capitals.
And the work of documentation, prosecution, and accountability will continue.
Because the arc of history is long. But it does not bend toward justice by itself. It bends because people who have seen enough decide to stop asking nicely and start demanding with consequences attached.
I have seen enough.
Learn more and take action:
Visit ForeverPeaceNow.com to watch the full documentary Forever Peace Now, sign the petition to the Spanish government (co-sponsored by RootsAction.org and WorldBeyondWar.org ), and read our ongoing analysis
Explore ParentsPlea.com to see the documented human cost
Vahid Razavi is a Silicon Valley technology veteran, digital rights activist, producer of the documentary Forever Peace Now, and author of Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof and The Age of Nepotism. He is currently completing his third book, No Ethics In Big Tech: An Insider's Case Against Silicon Valley's War on Humanity — and the Fight to Make Them Pay. Available to petition signers upon completion.
