Google staff resign in backlash over its AI contracts with military

Google is facing a backlash from some staff members over the company's deployment of its AI technology for military use.

The BBC has spoken to several tech workers who have either recently resigned from Google's AI company, Google DeepMind, or are in the process of leaving, over concerns with the tech firm's military contracts.

Sofia Liguori, a London-based research engineer, is one of them. She resigned from Google DeepMind this week and spoke about her concerns exclusively with the BBC, despite her contract restricting her from doing so.

"Realising my company is pushing more and more for AI systems in military operations makes me feel ashamed to work at Google," Liguori said, speaking in a personal capacity.

In response, a Google spokesperson told the BBC: "We work with public sector organisations worldwide and follow a consistent process for reviewing and entering these contracts, including compliance with our acceptable use policies and AI principles."

"We also have dedicated channels for employees to safely raise any concerns - ranging from business ethics to misconduct - and have strict workplace policies in place to prevent retaliation of any kind."

Google is one of several tech companies that signed contracts with the US military earlier this year to deploy AI across classified military environments. The US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has made integrating AI into the armed forces a key priority, saying the Trump administration will become an "AI-first warfighting force".

But AI technology is evolving rapidly, and critics question whether it is reliable enough to be used in warfare without more testing, stronger guardrails and human oversight.

After working for the company for three years, Liguori said she decided to resign over Google's increasing work with the US and Israeli militaries. "I don't agree with this direction and this has led me to lose faith in my company being true to its stated ethical values," she said.

Those values, according to Google's AI Principles, include implementing AI with "human oversight" and aligning the technology with "international law and human rights". But former and current staff at the company, and experts the BBC spoke to, said they were concerned about the level of human oversight at critical moments.

The tech workers said they are particularly worried about the AI military deals signed this year, because they greatly increase the scope of what the Pentagon can use the technology for.

Andreas Kirsch, an AI researcher, also resigned from Google DeepMind earlier this month over his concerns.

Kirsch told the BBC that he believes "Google's governance and oversight are not sufficient or meaningful enough to deploy AI safely and responsibly in military and classified settings" or "to develop artificial superintelligence safely in the future."

"Google seems to have no right to control or veto how the Pentagon uses its AI and also seems to have limited visibility into how it's being deployed," he added.

In the past few years, the US military has deployed multiple AI-enabled technologies to help advance its warfighting abilities.

The most prominent example of this is Maven Smart Systems, the Pentagon's main software platform for organising intelligence and data.

Developed by US defence company Palantir, it uses AI to help personnel select and identify targets to strike. Palantir has integrated the technology from several leading AI companies into Maven, and it has enabled some processes to be significantly speeded up.

Retired Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, who is the former director of Project Maven, said the "philosophy" seems to be: "Go as fast as possible to deploy [AI technology] as widely as possible, potentially at the expense of the rigour and discipline of test and evaluation."

However, the Pentagon has maintained that adopting AI technologies is essential for winning wars. "Speed defines victory in the AI era," said Emil Michael, an under secretary in the US Department of Defense, in a statement earlier this year.

Google's contract with the Pentagon, which was signed earlier this year, allows its AI technology to be used for classified military work. The agreement says Google's AI models can be used for "any lawful government purpose" and "should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (including target selection) without appropriate human oversight and control".

Similar contracts were signed by OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Oracle, Nvidia, and the start-up Reflection, to allow AI technology to be deployed across a range of military settings such as transport, planning and battlefield operations.

As the tech quickly evolves, concerns are growing about the use of AI in theatres of war.

"AI compresses the time an operator has to make a decision because it works much faster than a person, and that's especially risky in a high-stress environment," said Sarah Shoker, formerly head of OpenAI's Geopolitics team.

"When you have hundreds of targets that are selected by AI and a short amount of time, it is almost impossible for a human operator to meaningfully review the AI's outputs for errors."

Employees at Google have told the BBC that staff are scared to speak out about AI safety and its uses in warfare because their employment contracts prohibit them from publicly criticising the company.

"In principle I'm not allowed to criticise Google for the duration of my life," Sofia Liguori told the BBC. But she decided to do so "because I believe it's important for these things to be known and I also think that talking about facts is not criticising".

Liguori added that at Google "people are scared of retaliation and putting their career at risk. You feel you are being watched, you can't speak."

A current employee at Google DeepMind, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told the BBC that "a lot of motivated employees who signed up for [the company's] original mission could leave – but there's also a pipeline of people at the start of the careers who could fill those positions. It could be a changing of the guard."

Another Google DeepMind staff member, who also wished to remain anonymous, told the BBC: "A lot of people have left the company that feel strongly about this [how Google DeepMind has changed its ethics position]."

"Some people are putting up a fight, others are thinking: 'it's a big company. What do you expect to change?'", the employee said.

Google's agreements with Israel have also caused controversy. In 2024, the company was criticised by staff for a joint contract with Amazon worth $1.2bn (£960m) called Project Nimbus which provides Israel's government and military with AI technology and cloud computing infrastructure. At the time, Google said Project Nimbus "is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services".

Moreover, Israel's AI capabilities in warfare have been the focus of debate after they were featured in a recent documentary, Naza, which examines the role of AI-powered targeting systems to bombard the Gaza Strip, resulting in high civilian casualties. An Israeli government minister has said the claims presented in the film were false and distorted.

Former Google employee Andreas Kirsch believes AI technology in warfare is not ready for the battlefield. "Current AI models are not robust enough, and I don't think they have been trained for such tasks either," he said.

Additional reporting by Rosa Rahimi