More than 600 Google employees, including senior researchers inside Google DeepMind, have signed a letter urging chief executive Sundar Pichai to refuse a classified artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon, according to reporting by The Washington Post's Pranjshu Verma. The petition argues there is "no way to ensure that our tools will not cause serious harm or violate individual freedoms," reviving an internal revolt over military work that Google has faced before.
The dissent lands as Google moves in the opposite direction of its closest rival in frontier AI. Two months ago, Anthropic was dropped from a Pentagon deal after refusing to sign an "any lawful use" clause that would have let the Department of War deploy its models without Anthropic's own guardrails. Google has now signed the contract Anthropic walked away from, clearing the way for Gemini to be used for any lawful government purpose.
Gemini 3.1 is already running on the Pentagon's Gen AI ML platform, which serves roughly 3 million staff, giving the model immediate reach across the U.S. defense apparatus. That scale is part of what has alarmed the signatories, who include researchers from the lab Google bought to anchor its safety-conscious AI ambitions.
Key facts
- 01More than 600 Google employees, including senior DeepMind researchers, signed a letter to Sundar Pichai opposing a classified Pentagon AI contract, per The Washington Post.
- 02Google has signed the same deal Anthropic walked away from two months ago after refusing an 'any lawful use' clause.
- 03Gemini 3.1 is already live on the Pentagon's Gen AI ML platform, which serves roughly 3 million staff.
- 04Anthropic was labeled a supply chain risk over its refusal and is now suing the Department of Defense over the designation.
The fallout for Anthropic has been steep. After refusing the lawful-use language, the company was labeled a supply chain risk by the government and is now suing the Department of Defense over that designation. The episode has hardened a split inside the AI industry over how much control labs should keep over downstream military deployment of their systems.
Jaeden Schafer framed the contrast bluntly on AI Chat Daily, noting that "Google is now kind of doing the opposite. They signed the contract that Anthropic walked away from and they essentially allowed Gemini to be used for quote, any lawful government purpose." For the DeepMind staff who joined an organization founded on AI safety pledges, the deal puts their employer on the other side of a line Anthropic refused to cross.
The internal letter echoes the language used by Anthropic researchers earlier this year. Schafer said it "is kind of the same thing that a lot of the people over at Anthropic were, you know, were kind of saying and why they were trying to get Anthropic out of their deal with the Department of War." Google has so far shown no public sign of reconsidering.
The timing sharpens the political stakes. The European Union is finalizing its own framework for AI governance the same week, setting up a familiar transatlantic divergence over how aggressively governments should constrain frontier models, especially in defense. Schafer said it is "always interesting for me to see how Brussels treats AI versus Washington," with the Pentagon contract serving as a case study in the American approach.
For Pichai, the petition revives a familiar management problem. Google retreated from Project Maven in 2018 after a similar staff revolt, then quietly rebuilt its public-sector business. This time, the dissenters include the DeepMind talent the company has spent years recruiting, and the contract at issue is one a peer lab judged too risky to sign.
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