{"id":644141,"date":"2026-04-29T08:48:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=644141"},"modified":"2026-04-29T08:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:48:09","slug":"google-signs-deal-letting-us-military-use-ai-for-classified-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/ai\/644141-google-signs-deal-letting-us-military-use-ai-for-classified-work.html","title":{"rendered":"Google signs deal letting US military use AI for classified work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Google has reached an agreement with the US Department of War to allow its artificial intelligence systems to be used for classified military work, according to a Pentagon official, a deal that came together as researchers at the company protested against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deal was signed at 16:00 on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokesperson for Alphabet\u2019s Google told Bloomberg News that the company had amended its contract with the Pentagon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many details of the deal remain unclear, the spokesperson said it included providing the Pentagon with API access, giving the agency the ability to connect directly with the company\u2019s software, but it didn\u2019t entail custom work or model development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe believe that providing API access to our commercial models, including on Google infrastructure, with industry-standard practices and terms, represents a responsible approach to supporting national security,\u201d a company spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight,\u201d the spokesperson added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both the Pentagon official and the person familiar with the matter asked not to be named to discuss contractual issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amended contract represents a significant new milestone in Google\u2019s provision of AI to the Pentagon, which has seen several instances of employees protesting the use of the company\u2019s technology for some military uses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent happened on Monday, when hundreds of AI researchers sent a letter to Alphabet chief executive officer Sundar Pichai urging him to refuse to make the company\u2019s AI systems available for classified workloads for US defence missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are Google employees who are deeply concerned about ongoing negotiations between Google and the US Department of Defense,\u201d reads the letter, which was provided to Bloomberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralise power and that they do make mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous worker resistance against military project<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet, speaks during the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, California, US, on Thursday, June 9, 2022. Photographer: Kyle Grillot\/Bloomberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Google workers in 2018 also protested the company\u2019s use of its technology for Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative to use AI to analyse drone footage that has become the heart of how America makes war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protests prompted the company to pledge not to make weapons and other potentially harmful technologies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google said at the time that its work on Project Maven was intended for \u201cnon-offensive purposes,\u201d but in the face of protests and concerns that such technology could lead to lethal outcomes, the company decided not to renew its contract for Maven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deal also follows a breakdown between the Pentagon and Anthropic PBC earlier this year over the use of AI for military applications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pentagon is seeking to eject Anthropic and its Claude AI tool from US defence supply chains and has been casting around for new tech giant AI partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Information previously reported<\/a> on Google\u2019s deal to provide its AI systems to the Pentagon for classified work \u201cfor any lawful government purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google also dropped out of a $100 million Pentagon prize challenge to create technology for voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarms after it was among the successful submissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision followed an internal ethics review, according to records referencing it that were reviewed by Bloomberg. Google officially cited a lack of \u201cresourcing,\u201d according to the records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The move represents a significant new milestone in Google\u2019s provision of AI to the Pentagon, which has seen several instances of employees protesting the use of the company\u2019s technology for some military uses. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":644143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92837],"tags":[32030,35793,167,8809,2548,50799,19709,77958,104882,12595],"class_list":["post-644141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","tag-alphabet","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-google","tag-military","tag-pentagon","tag-project-maven","tag-sundar-pichai","tag-us-department-of-defense","tag-us-department-of-war","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644157,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644141\/revisions\/644157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}