580+ Google Employees Urge Pichai to Refuse Classified Pentagon AI Deal
April 27, 2026 – 5:00 pm
Summary:
More than 580 Google employees, including 20+ directors and VPs, and senior DeepMind researchers, have signed a letter urging CEO Sundar Pichai to refuse classified military AI work for the Pentagon. The letter argues that without monitoring on air-gapped networks, Google cannot guarantee its AI won’t be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.
Full Text:
More than 580 Google employees, including over 20 directors, senior directors, and vice presidents, have signed a letter urging CEO Sundar Pichai to refuse classified military AI work for the Pentagon, according to Bloomberg. The letter, sent to Pichai on Monday, includes signatures from senior researchers at Google DeepMind.
"We are Google employees who are deeply concerned about ongoing negotiations between Google and the US Department of Defense," the letter states. "As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and make mistakes." The signatories request Google reject all classified workloads, contending that without monitoring capabilities on air-gapped networks, Google cannot ensure its AI tools are not misused.
"Currently, the only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads. Otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them."
Context:
This isn’t the first time Google employees have expressed concern about this issue. In 2018, a similar protest led to Google introducing AI principles promising not to build weapons or surveillance technology. However, since then, Google has reversed course: they won a share of the Pentagon’s $9 billion cloud contract in 2022 and removed AI guidelines related to weapons from their policies in 2025.
The letter emphasizes that without concrete assurances about how their AI will be used, Google employees remain concerned about potential negative impacts on privacy, power dynamics, and the development of autonomous weapons.