The day after “defiant” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow the use of Claude AI for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons by the U.S. Department of War, over 200 employees of “conflicted” internet infrastructure giant Google and “ubiquitous” OpenAI showed their solidarity through an open letter.
Safety, infrastructure and mass adoption — staff of the three frontier U.S. tech forces showed their solidarity to the Anthropic through an open letter, over its recent feud with U.S. military officials.
As reported by Axios, the open letter available on notdivided.org urges limits on how advanced AI is used for military purposes.
The open letter comes in the wake of Amodei releasing a statement wherein he claimed that the U.S. Department of War had threatened the AI startup of getting labelled as a “supply chain risk.”
“The Department of War is threatening Anthropic, all in retaliation for Anthropic sticking to their red lines to not allow their models to be used for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight,” read the open letter, signed by over 200 former and current employees of OpenAI and Google.
In a detailed public statement, Amodei warned that certain uses of artificial intelligence could undermine democratic values rather than protect them. “Regardless, these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei said, referring to demands that Claude be opened for unrestricted military use.
According to the letter, the Pentagon is in talks with Google and OpenAI in an effort to secure agreements Anthropic has declined. The authors argue that government negotiators are attempting to play companies against one another by suggesting rivals will concede first. “That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand,” the letter states, calling on leadership at Google and OpenAI to “stand together” rather than negotiate separately.
Organizers of the protest say the effort is independent, unaffiliated with any AI firm or political group. Signatures are verified, and employees are allowed to sign anonymously. As of Thursday evening, more than 200 employees of Google and OpenAI have signed the open form, as reported by Axios.
For context, Google’s parent company Alphabet employs nearly 200,000 people worldwide, while OpenAI’s workforce is estimated to be under 10,000. Some members of U.S. Congress have also urged the government to de-escalate its dispute with Anthropic.
The letter arrives amid renewed scrutiny after Google reversed its internal ban on AI use for weapons and surveillance in February 2025.
