Google Military AI Protest Reenacts: Over 600 Employees Sign Petition Asking Pichai to Reject Pentagon Confidential Contract

CryptoWorld News reports that more than 600 Google employees have jointly written to CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding that the company refuse to deploy AI models on the Pentagon’s classified networks. The organizers say that among the signatories are a large number of Google DeepMind researchers, as well as more than 20 directors and vice president-level executives. In the letter, they state that the only way to ensure Google is not associated with such harm is to refuse all confidential workloads.

Updates show that Google has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense that allows the military to use Google’s AI for classified work, with the terms “for all lawful government purposes.” The agreement is an amendment to a non-classified contract from last November. That contract included statements about security bottom lines: the two sides agreed that AI “shall not be used for” large-scale domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons operated without human control, but legally, it has no binding effect. Google is the third company, after OpenAI and xAI, to sign a classified AI agreement with the Pentagon.