• Around 600 Google employees urged CEO Sundar Pichai to reject classified Pentagon AI deals.
• They said they want to see AI benefit humanity, not be used for autonomous weapons or surveillance.
• Google and the Pentagon are in talks to use Gemini in classified settings, per a recent report.

Around 600 Google employees sent a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday, urging him not to let the company's AI technology be used by the US military for classified operations.

The letter, signed by employees in Google's DeepMind and Cloud divisions, cited a recent Information report that Google and the Pentagon were negotiating the use of Google's Gemini AI in classified settings.

"As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and that they do make mistakes," the employees wrote in the letter. "We feel that our proximity to this technology creates a responsibility to highlight and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses."

"Currently, the only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads," employees continued in the letter. "Otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them."

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Google has not yet responded to the letter, said Jane Chung, the founder of Justice Speaks, a communications firm representing the workers. Bloomberg first reported on the letter.

Google has long faced internal pushback to its efforts to work with the US military. In 2018, it decided not to renew Project Maven, a Department of Defense contract to integrate AI into military operations, following pressure from hundreds of employees. Palantir later picked up the deal.

The same year, Google established a set of AI principles, including a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance. Last year, it updated those AI principles to remove wording around weapons and surveillance.

The company also secured new contracts with the Pentagon last year to use its AI and cloud products. In March, the company said it would provide the Pentagon with AI agents in a non-classified setting. It also told Google DeepMind employees during a January meeting that they should expect more of these types of deals.

In the letter, Google employees raised concerns that classified work would lead to a lack of oversight into how the company's technology is used.

"We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways," the employees wrote. "This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond."

Read the full letter below:

Dear Sundar,

We are Google employees who are deeply concerned about ongoing negotiations between Google and the US Department of Defense. As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and that they do make mistakes. We feel that our proximity to this technology creates a responsibility to highlight and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses.

Therefore, we ask you to refuse to make our AI systems available for classified workloads.

We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways. This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond. 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.

Making the wrong call right now would cause irreparable damage to Google's reputation, business, and role in the world. At this very moment, the safety of our own workforce and critical infrastructure are under active threat. Human lives are already being lost and civil liberties put at risk at home and abroad from misuses of the technology we're playing a key role in building.

We know from our own history that our leaders can make the right choices, for ourselves and for the world, when the stakes are high.

Today, we call on you, Sundar, to act according to the values on which this company was built, and refuse classified workloads.

• A Pentagon official recently demonstrated how a Palantir tool can be used to support strikes.
• Cameron Staley, the Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer, praised Palantir's Project Maven.
• According to multiple reports, the US military has relied on Maven to help carry out its war with Iran.

A top Pentagon official provided a rare look inside how the military uses Palantir's Project Maven to carry out strikes.

Once you detect something you want to target, "this is what we do," Cameron Stanley, the Department of Defense's chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, said during a presentation at Palantir's AIPCon 9.

"Left click, right click, left click," he said.

Palantir posted a video of Stanley's demonstration over the weekend showing how the system could use satellite imagery alongside multiple data feeds, including a flight-tracking system.

Using the system, he highlighted how the list of potential targets could be narrowed to a specific car in the parking lot.

In another part of the demo, Stanley showed how artificial intelligence is used to identify "what the best asset" is to carry out the strike. For the demonstration, it was a mounted .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun on a Stryker armored fighting vehicle.

"We've gone from identifying the target, to now coming up with a course of action, to now actioning that target all within one system," Stanley said. "This is revolutionary."

We were having this done in about eight or nine systems, where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to a desire end state, in this case actually closing a kill chain," he said, pointing to combat footage of a strike.

"When we started this, it literally took hours to do what you just saw," he said of the process of going from detection to targeting to decision-making to engagement. "We've been able to reduce that time significantly."

Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his deputies are somewhat cagey about exactly what Project Maven entails, given its classified uses. Citing information "in the papers," Karp said that his company has provided the US and its allies an advantage on the battlefield.

"The fact that you can now target more precisely, more accurately, more quickly, and that, meaning America, can do all these, organize the total power of our fleet and all of our resources, and bring it to bear against our adversaries and enemies has shifted the way in which war is fought," Karp told CNBC on the sidelines of the conference. "And I have read that Palantir's Project Maven is the core backbone of that."

The Army's Commander and Staff Guide to Data Literacy says that Maven is part of "the cutting-edge capabilities" troops rely on "to assist in targeting and executing strikes."

"While MSS can greatly enable the decision-making process, staff members will need to have a cursory understanding of how these emerging systems function to fully appreciate their capabilities and limitations," the guide reads, referring to the Maven Smart System.

The MSS has been an integral part of the US's War in Iran, The Washington Post recently reported. Anthropic's Claude is embedded in the system, a topic of major discussion after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to effectively blacklist the AI startup after it refused to give the Pentagon unfettered access to its AI models.

Business Insider has not independently confirmed Maven's use in Operation Epic Fury nor the integration of Anthropic's models into Maven's systems. Spokespersons for the Pentagon and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's products within six months. Anthropic has sued the Pentagon, the Executive Office of the President, and a host of other federal agencies to block Hegseth and Trump's directives.

Initially overseen by Google, Palantir took over Project Maven, part of the software company's highly successful partnerships with the US and allied governments. Karp boasted last year that Palantir's products are so popular that he doesn't have time for US allies who hassle the company with endless meeting requests.

"I'm telling governments all over the world, look, we're not showing up to do this sales call for Maven," Karp told podcaster Molly O'Shea in November 2025. "You know it works. We know it works. Show up to my office and explain how you're going to make this easy for us, because we don't have huge bandwidth."