New York (AFP) – The Pentagon has arranged a deal to increase its use of Google’s artificial intelligence in classified operations, US media outlets reported on Tuesday. The news comes as the US military looks to wean itself off Anthropic’s AI due to the company’s objection to its technology being used for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous killing machines. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In February, Trump instructed the US government to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s technology after Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk — a label typically reserved for organizations from unfriendly foreign countries. The company is now fighting these measures in court. Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, was the only one authorized for use in classified operations within the US military. Following the Anthropic crisis, rival OpenAI reached an agreement with the government to integrate its AI interfaces into this framework.
According to technology news website The Information, Elon Musk’s AI firm xAI also struck a deal with the Pentagon after its clash with Anthropic. “Overreliance on one vendor is never a good thing,” Pentagon chief digital officer Cameron Stanley said in an interview with broadcaster CNBC. The Pentagon’s agreements with technology providers is reported to include only using AI tools in ways allowed by law.
More than 600 Google employees demanded Monday that the company reject a proposed Pentagon deal that would allow its artificial intelligence technology to be deployed in classified military operations, a statement said. A letter addressed to Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai was signed by workers from several company divisions. “Classified workloads are by definition opaque,” said one organizing employee, who was not named in the statement. “Right now, there’s no way to ensure that our tools wouldn’t be leveraged to cause terrible harms or erode civil liberties away from public scrutiny.”
The Pentagon has pushed for broad wording in AI agreements, arguing that it is necessary to maintain operational flexibility. In 2018, an employee movement successfully pushed Google to abandon Project Maven, a Pentagon program to integrate AI into drone operations. But in recent years, Google has embarked on a strategy shift, steadily rebuilding its military business and competing with rivals for defense cloud contracts.
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