Over 200 Google and OpenAI employees sign open letter refusing to provide military AI technology to the Pentagon

Phoenix.com Technology News: On February 27, according to ASIOS, more than 200 employees at Google and OpenAI have jointly signed a public letter recently, officially voicing support for Anthropic’s position and calling for strict restrictions on the use of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) in the military and surveillance sectors. The joint letter clearly opposes using AI technology for controversial areas such as domestic surveillance or fully automated warfare, in order to resist the U.S. Department of Defense’s related technology requests.

As of Thursday afternoon local time, the letter had already secured verified signatures from more than 160 Google employees and more than 40 OpenAI employees, and some people chose to participate anonymously. The letter states that the U.S. Department of Defense is trying to leverage competition between companies to conduct negotiations separately with Google and OpenAI in order to obtain AI technology support that Anthropic had explicitly rejected earlier. In response, employees call on the management teams of both companies to put aside their differences, jointly resist such demands from the military, and emphasize that the broader industry should maintain information transparency on the bottom line of technology.

This joint statement by front-line employees directly challenges the current compliance and business decisions of technology giants. According to available information, Google previously revoked its internal rules in February 2025 that prohibited using AI for weapons and surveillance. The current focus is whether the actions of these signatories—given that Google has nearly 200,000 employees and OpenAI has nearly 10,000—can substantially force management to reestablish the ethical red line for authorizing AI technology.