More than 560 Google employees have reportedly signed an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, urging him to reject classified military contracts for the company’s AI technology.
Financial Times (FT) reported the letter was signed by more than 20 directors, VPs and senior researchers from the DeepMind AI lab.
It calls on Google to refuse “classified workloads” entirely, warning harmful use cases such as lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance could occur without employees’ knowledge.
The move comes as Google is reportedly close to a deal with the US Department of War which would allow its Gemini model to be used in classified operations without the protections rival Anthropic insisted on.
The signatories argue because classified networks are “air-gapped”, which means they are isolated from the public internet, Google would have no way to monitor or limit how its AI is used.
“We want to see AI benefit humanity, not being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways,” the letter cited by FT stated.
“The only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads,” the letter stated “otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them.”
The news site noted the letter was largely coordinated by DeepMind staff, with roughly two-fifths of signatories coming from the AI division and another two-fifths from its cloud unit.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to give the US government unrestricted access to its Claude chatbot, which led to the company being designated a supply chain risk and banned from federal use by President Donald Trump. Anthropic is challenging the decision in court.
