MSFT Shares Briefly Drop After Trump Retweet

After Microsoft followed IBM and Amazon in banning the sale of its facial recognition system to American police:

“We will not sell facial recognition tech to police in the U.S. until there is a national law in place,” said Smith, speaking via video conference at a Washington Post event.

“We must pursue a national law to govern facial recognition grounded in the protection of human rights.”

President Trump has decided enough is enough and retweeted a brief note from Richard Grenell calling for Microsoft to be barred from federal contracts…

They should now be barred from federal government contracts – there should be consequences for not selling technology to police departments. @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/dsOVPVfufI

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) June 12, 2020

MSFT shares did briefly react, but dip-buyers rampaged back in…

Will it hold?

While Microsoft said it plans to wait until there is national legislation governing police use of the technology, the company has spent the first half of this year lobbying state governments to pass bills to permit the use of facial recognition by police.

What will this mean for the massive JEDI contract that Microsoft somewhat controversially won over Amazon?