Employees at Google and OpenAI support Anthropic’s Pentagon stand in open letter

Anthropic has reached a stalemate with the United States Department of War over the military’s request for unrestricted access to the AI company’s technology. But as the Pentagon’s Friday afternoon deadline for Anthropic’s compliance approaches, more than 300 Google employees and over 60 OpenAI employees have signed an open letter urging the leaders of their companies to support Anthropic and refuse this unilateral use.

Specifically, Anthropic stood in opposition to the use of AI for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weaponry. The open letter’s signatories seek to encourage their employers to “put aside their differences and stand together” to uphold the boundaries Anthropic has asserted.

“They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in,” the letter says. “That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand.”

The letter specifically calls on executives at Google and OpenAI to maintain Anthropic’s red lines against mass surveillance and fully automated weaponry. “We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War’s current demands.”

Leaders at the companies have not yet formally reponded to the letter. TechCrunch has reached out to Google and OpenAI for comment.

However, informal statements suggest both companies are sympathetic to Anthropic’s side of the case. In an interview with CNBC on Friday morning, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that he doesn’t “personally think the Pentagon should be threatening DPA against these companies.” According to a CNN reporter, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed that the company shares Anthropic’s red lines against autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

Google DeepMind has not formally addressed the conflict, but Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, presumably speaking as an individual, did express opposition to mass surveillance by the government.

“Mass surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment and has a chilling effect on freedom of expression,” Dean wrote on X. “Surveillance systems are prone to misuse for political or discriminatory purposes.”

According to an Axios report, the military currently can use X’s Grok, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT for unclassified tasks, and has been negotiating with Google and OpenAI to bring its technology over for use in classified work.

While Anthropic has an existing partnership with the Pentagon, the AI company has remained firm in maintaining the boundary that its AI be used for neither mass domestic surveillance, nor fully autonomous weaponry.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that if his company doesn’t concede, the Pentagon will either declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk” or invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force the company to comply with military demands.

In a statement on Thursday, Amodei maintained his company’s position. “These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security,” the statement reads. “Regardless, these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”