Open Letter
The Department of War is threatening to
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.
The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused.
They're trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure from the Department of War.
We are the employees of Google and OpenAI, two of the top AI companies in the world.
We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight.
Signed,
Google: 591 signatories (all of whom are current employees)
OpenAI: 93 signatories (all of whom are current employees)
Current and former employees of Google and OpenAI are invited to sign. You may sign anonymously. All signatures are verified before being published.
The goal of this letter is to find common ground. The signatories likely have a diverse set of views. The current situation with the DoW is so clear-cut that it can bring together a very broad coalition. Signing this letter doesn't mean you think it's the only thing that needs to be done, just that you agree with the bottom line.
This letter was organized by a few citizens who are concerned about the potential misuse of AI against Americans. We are not affiliated with any political party, advocacy group, or organization. We are not affiliated with any AI company and are not paid.
Current and former employees of Google and OpenAI are invited to sign. We verify every signature to ensure authenticity. You may sign anonymously.
If you sign anonymously, your personal information (name, email) is automatically and permanently deleted from our database within 24 hours of verification. After deletion, only your anonymous public listing remains (e.g. "Anonymous, verified current employee at [Company]"). Only one organizer has access to review anonymous signatures during that 24-hour window. No one else can see your identity.
If you sign publicly, we store your name and affiliation to display on the letter. Email addresses used for verification are never published or shared.
Don't worry. We de-duplicate non-anonymous signatures automatically, and anonymous signatures within 24 hours (before personal data is deleted). For anonymous signatories beyond 24 hours, we cannot verify there are no duplicates, though there is one human who manually reads all signatures and will try hard to notice and correct any abuse of the system.
Sign again using the "Alternative verification" method. In the verification details, mention that you previously signed anonymously and would like to switch to a named signature. We'll update your entry and make sure you're not double-counted.
Every signature is verified before it appears on the letter. If you sign using the Google Form or email verification options, we confirm that you have access to a @google.com or @openai.com email address. If you use alternative verification, an organizer manually reviews your proof of employment. No signature is published without verification.
We are aware of two mistakes in our efforts to verify the signatures in the form so far. One person who was not an employee of OpenAI or Google found a bug in our verification system and signed falsely under the name "You guys are letting China Win". This was noticed and fixed in under 10 minutes, and the verification system was improved to prevent mistakes like this from happening again. We also had two people submit twice in a way that our automatic de-duplication didn't catch. We do periodic checks for this. Because of anonymity considerations, all signatures are manually reviewed by one fallible human. We do our best to make sure we catch and correct any mistakes, but we are not perfect and will probably make mistakes. We will log those mistakes here as we find them.
This site is hosted on Fly.io, a US-based infrastructure provider. The database is SQLite, stored on an encrypted persistent volume. Verification emails are sent via Resend. Google Forms is used as one verification option because it allows email confirmation without sending anything to your inbox. The site itself is a simple open-source Flask application. No analytics or tracking scripts are used. DNS and SSL are managed through Cloudflare.