OpenAI and Google employees have warned their companies not to hand over AI to the Department of Defense without safeguards.
A growing number of current and former staff members from OpenAI and Google have signed a joint petition opposing the use of their AI tools for mass surveillance or as weapons capable of killing without human oversight.
The online petition, titled “We Will Not Be Divided,” calls on current and former employees of both companies to oppose what they see as a dangerous direction for AI deployment. Signers must be verified and can choose to remain anonymous.
As of Friday, more than 220 Google and OpenAI employees had signed the petition, including 176 from Google and 47 from OpenAI.
Google will have approximately 187,000 employees worldwide as of mid-2025, while OpenAI will have several thousand employees.
The petition said the Department of the Army is invoking the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to provide its AI models to the military and “adjust the models to the military’s needs,” threatening to label the company a “supply chain risk” if it refuses.
“The Department of Defense is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to agree to what Anthropic has rejected,” the petition adds.
The petition was filed after Axios reported on Tuesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had set a deadline for Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to give the U.S. military full access to the company’s AI models and warned him of the potential consequences of refusing.
“The only reason we’re still talking to these people is because we need them and we still need them,” a defense official told Axios. “The problem with them is that they’re very good.”
During a visit to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in January, Hegseth described AI development as a “wartime arms race” and urged rapid deployment of cutting-edge models for military use.
“We won’t adopt an AI model that won’t lead to war,” Hegseth said.
Anthropic said in a blog post Thursday that it will not allow its technology to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to power weapons that operate without human oversight.
“They are trying to divide each company out of fear that the other will give in,” the petition said, referring to the War Department.
“That strategy only works if none of us know the other’s position. This letter will help create common understanding and unity in the face of this pressure from the Department of the Army,” it added.
“We hope our nation’s leaders will put aside their differences and come together to continue rejecting the Department of the Army’s current request for domestic mass surveillance and permission to use the model to kill people autonomously without human oversight.”
‘It’s truly uncharted territory.”
Experts told Business Insider in a report Thursday that threatening to use national security emergency powers to pressure private AI companies is a new and largely untested approach.
“We’re in completely uncharted territory,” Dean Ball, former senior policy adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and fellow at the American Innovation Foundation, told Business Insider.
“What are the risks for Anthropic? That means Anthropic could be quasi-nationalized or forced out of business,” Ball said. “It’s a big gamble for them.”
Ball said the episode could send a broader signal throughout the tech industry that “doing business with the government is very dangerous.”
“That’s a big risk,” he added.
