Google staff urge Pichai refuse Pentagon deal

More than 600 Google employees have asked Sundar Pichai to block a Pentagon deal that would let the military use Google artificial intelligence in classified work. (cbsnews.com) (thehill.com) The letter was sent Monday, April 27, and says Google workers on artificial intelligence systems do not want the company’s tools used for “classified workloads.” (cbsnews.com) (thehill.com) Signers said artificial intelligence systems can “centralize power” and “make mistakes,” and they named lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance as the risks they fear. (cbsnews.com) The protest follows reporting by The Information that Google and the Defense Department have discussed letting the Pentagon deploy Gemini models in classified settings. (thehill.com) (cbsnews.com) Google already works with the Pentagon on unclassified tasks through a program called genAI.mil, and the disputed step would move that relationship into secret military networks. (thehill.com) (defenseone.com) The employee letter says technical safeguards are not enough once a model is inside classified systems, because workers cannot verify how the tools are actually used after deployment. (thehill.com) This is not Google’s first fight over military work. In 2018, employee protests helped push the company to let its Project Maven contract for Pentagon drone imagery expire. (moneycontrol.com) The company’s public policy has also changed. In February 2025, Google removed language from its artificial intelligence principles that had explicitly ruled out weapons and surveillance uses. (cnbc.com) Google said in that 2025 update that democracies should lead in artificial intelligence and that it would judge work by weighing benefits against risks. (cnbc.com) The Pentagon dispute also comes after Anthropic was dropped from Defense Department work earlier this year after seeking limits on domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, and OpenAI then reached its own Pentagon agreement. (thehill.com) (cbsnews.com) Neither Google nor the Pentagon immediately responded to CBS News on the new employee letter. For now, the pressure is on Pichai to decide whether Google’s next military contract stops at unclassified systems. (cbsnews.com)