Google تدخل عقول 3 ملايين عسكري أمريكي

In a move that reflects the accelerating race for artificial intelligence within U.S. military institutions, Google has begun to expand its technical presence within the U.S. Department of Defense by launching generative AI tools aimed at millions of military and civilian employees.

The new initiative comes at a sensitive time, following a legal confrontation between Anthropic and the administration of President Donald Trump, after the company was included on a supply chain risk list, a rare step previously used against foreign companies like Huawei and Kaspersky.

Google announced the launch of a new feature that allows over 3 million employees at the Department of Defense to build "AI agents" tailored for non-sensitive tasks through the Pentagon's digital portal GenAI.mil.

The platform relies on a development tool called Agent Designer, which allows the creation of digital assistants without the need for advanced programming skills, opening the door for employees to design smart applications that assist them in their daily tasks.

The tasks of these agents vary from preparing meeting minutes, organizing work plans, to transforming major projects into clear executable tasks that can be easily managed within different departments.

Although the system currently operates within the non-sensitive networks of the Department of Defense, technical reports indicate that negotiations are already underway to transfer these tools to the secret and highly sensitive environments within the Pentagon.

In this context, the Chief Technology Officer at the Department of Defense, Emile Michael, confirmed that Google has proven its ability to work as a strategic partner across various military networks, noting that the department is currently focused on accelerating the adoption of AI technologies in its daily operations.

The tension with Anthropic began after it refused to allow the use of its technologies in sensitive military applications such as autonomous weapons or local surveillance systems, including the smart chat program Claude.

This refusal led the Department of Defense to terminate its collaboration with the company, opening the door for other companies to strongly enter restricted networks, including OpenAI and xAI, owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk.

However, the military expansion in the use of artificial intelligence has sparked division within the tech companies themselves. The head of the AI department at Google, Jeff Dean, along with dozens of employees, signed a legal memorandum supporting Anthropic in its legal battle against the Pentagon.

Concerns within the company focus on the potential use of their technologies in surveillance systems or autonomous weapons, a matter that recalls the crisis of the Maven project in 2018, when Google faced a wave of resignations after its technologies were used to analyze images from drones for the benefit of the U.S. military.

Amid the competition among companies for military contracts and the ethical concerns within Silicon Valley, it seems that artificial intelligence has become a new battleground between politics, technology, and national security.