A group of Google employees has sent a petition to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding that the company refuse classified artificial intelligence work with the U.S. Department of Defense, according to The Washington Post.
The internal pressure campaign comes as Google has been deepening its ties with the military. Workers are pushing back on the direction, calling on leadership to draw a clear line against secret government AI projects.
The employee unrest is not limited to rank-and-file staff. René Mayrhofer, a senior Google director, has resigned from the company and publicly cited concerns about Google's evolving stance on AI, its military partnerships, and its environmental commitments, according to reporting by MSN. Mayrhofer's departure signals that the dissent reaches into the company's management layers.
This episode echoes a recurring tension at Google. In 2018, thousands of employees protested Project Maven, a Pentagon contract that used AI to analyze drone footage. That backlash led Google to let the contract expire and publish AI ethics principles. But in the years since, critics inside the company say those principles have quietly eroded as Google has pursued lucrative government deals.
The stakes are significant: classified AI contracts represent a growing frontier where technology companies help militaries make faster, more autonomous decisions — work that many engineers consider ethically distinct from commercial products. When a company's own directors resign over the question, it suggests the internal debate is far from settled.