Topline
Hundreds of current Google and OpenAI employees signed an open letter expressing their support for Anthropic’s refusal to comply with the Pentagon’s demand for unrestricted access to its AI tools and urging the leaders of their own companies to also adhere to similar red lines and reject the Defense Department’s demands.
Google and OpenAI employees signed a petition expressing support for Anthropic in its battle with the Pentagon.
© 2025 Bloomberg Finance LP
Key facts
As of Friday morning, the petition titled “We will not be divided’ has been publicly signed by 266 Google and 65 OpenAI employees, all of whom are current employees.
With reference to a Axios reportthe letter accuses the Defense Department of going after Anthropic because it “stands by their red lines of not allowing their models to be used for domestic mass surveillance and the autonomous killing of people without human oversight.”
The letter goes on to note that the Pentagon is currently negotiating with Google and OpenAI “to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused.”
The signatories accuse the Pentagon of trying to “divide each company out of fear that the other will give in,” stating: “This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of these pressures.”
The petition then calls on the leaders of OpenAI and Google to “put aside their differences and continue working together to reject” the Pentagon’s demands.
Tangent
Thursday is the New York Times reported that more than 100 Google employees working on AI signed an internal letter to the company’s leadership expressing concerns about the Pentagon’s plan to use their AI tools. The letter to Jeff Dean, the chief scientist of Google’s AI division DeepMind, urged the company to endorse Anthorpic’s demands. “Please do everything in your power to stop any deal that crosses these basic red lines… We love working at Google and want to be proud of our work,” the letter said.
What did Anthropic say about the Pentagon clash?
In one statement In the statement released Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei doubled down on the red lines, saying his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s request to lift its safeguards and allow “any lawful use” of its AI tools. The statement outlined the work Anthropic has done to deploy its models to the U.S. military and intelligence community, but said it believes there is a “limited set of cases we believe AI can undermine rather than defend democratic values.” As a result, the contracts with the Defense Department include two safeguards that prevent the use of their AI in “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons,” which do not require human intervention for deployment.
Crucial quote
“AI-driven mass surveillance poses serious, new risks to our fundamental freedoms. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet caught up with AI’s rapidly growing capabilities,” Amodei said in his statement. He also added, “Today, AI systems at the border are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. We will not knowingly deliver a product that endangers American warfighters and civilians.”
#OpenAI #Google #employees #sign #petition #set #limits #Pentagons