Hundreds of employees at Alphabet’s Google have called on CEO Sundar Pichai not to allow the use of the company’s artificial intelligence by the Pentagon in classified settings, as a media report alleged that the tech giant has reached an agreement with the defense department.
In an open letter, employees working on AI projects expressed concerns about the company’s ongoing talks with the U.S. Department of Defense, arguing that the technology is not suitable for “classified workloads.”
“We feel that our proximity to this technology creates a responsibility to highlight and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses,” the letter read. “Therefore, we ask you to refuse to make our AI systems available for classified workloads.”
“We want to see AI benefit humanity,” they said, and not be used in “inhumane or extremely harmful ways.”
As people working in AI, we know that these systems “do make mistakes,” they said.
The letter cited lethal autonomous weapons and widespread surveillance as examples of how AI could be misused.
A poor decision at this stage could seriously harm Google’s reputation, business, and global standing, it cautioned.
Google joined a growing list of technology firms to sign a deal with the U.S. Department of Defense to use its artificial intelligence models for classified work, according to a report by The Information on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The agreement allows the Pentagon to use Google’s AI for “any lawful government purpose,” the report added, putting it alongside OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI, which also have to supply AI models for classified use.
Classified networks are used to handle a wide range of sensitive work, including mission planning and weapons targeting.
The Pentagon signed agreements worth up to $200 million each with major AI labs in 2025, including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.
Reuters had earlier reported that the Pentagon had been pushing top AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic to make their tools available on classified networks without the standard restrictions they apply to users.
