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Thousands of Google employees ask company to drop military AI project
July 11, 2025
More than 3,100 Google employees have signed a letter asking the company to cancel its work on Project Maven. According toThe New York Times, of the 3,100 people who signed the letter, dozens are senior engineers at the company.
Project Maven is a US Department of Defense (DoD) initiative that aims to use artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage for vehicles and other objects. Technologies developed through the project havereportedly already been usedin the fight against ISIS.
In theletter,the Google employees say that the company “should not be in the business of war.” While they acknowledge that the technology is not being built to launch weapons or operate drones, they suggest that “once it’s delivered it could easily be used to assist in these tasks.”
The Google employees appear to be concerned that, by entering into contracts with the DoD, the company may struggle to keep the trust of the public and “will irreparably damage Google’s brand.” Trust has been a huge issue in the tech community over the last few weeks withFacebook’s use of its customers’ datadominating the headlines, so it is easy to see why letters’ signees would be worried.
Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are at theforefront of AI innovationand Google spoke of its aim to be an“AI first” companyat Google I/O last year. It has long been using algorithms andmachine learning,specifically in image detection, to power everything from the Pixel 2’s impressive camera, to the technology behindGoogle Lensthat has recently startedrolling out to millions of Android devices.
It is, therefore, little surprise that the DoD would want to use Google’s expertise to help out with the development of its own AI technology — especially considering that the military is thought tolag behind the tech industrywhen it comes to AI.
Also, military contracts can be very lucrative, so it isn’t exactly a one-sided deal. WhileThe New York Timesarticle states that the initial year of the contract is expected to cost less than $70 million, future projects could earn the company far more.
However, for a company whose famous slogan is “Don’t be evil,” and, more importantly, has billions of customers from all corners of the earth, it is easy to see why some employees at the company would feel uneasy about Google’s decision to enter into a contract with a military organisation.
The letter ends with a call for Google to recognize its moral and ethical responsibility by coming up with a policy that states “neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
Up next:What being an “AI first” company means for Google
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