Google Chooses Patriotism in the AI Race

By Rebecca Grant: Google’s Gemini hit one billion users – and thanks to the patriotism of Google’s top executives, the United States military is tapping that innovation source for AI, too.  “1B+ people are now using @Geminiapp every month to spark new ideas and get things done. It’s our fastest growing product ever, and our 14th to hit the 1B-user mark,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on X on August 11.

In December 2025, Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government products were the first to appear on the Department of War’s GenAI.mil enterprise platform for office workflow.  The December 2025 rollout began at Impact Level 5, with Controlled Unclassified Information.  ChatGPT from OpenAI and xAI’s Grok later became available on GenAI.mil.  “A good future is going to require real and deep collaboration between the government and the AI labs,” noted OpenAI earlier this year.

The enterprise-level rollout has gone from an estimated 80,000 Department of War users to over 1.2 million.  The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force have all designated GenAI as the default enterprise model primarily for office workflow.  “Right now at this level we’re not talking about the warfighters in Central Command, we’re talking about the average employee,” Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael clarified at a Hudson Institute event. 

AI for classified networks has caused much more upheaval, and here again, Google took the patriotic route.  On May 1, the War Department finalized agreements with eight of the world’s leading frontier artificial intelligence companies, SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle to deploy their advanced AI capabilities on the Department’s classified networks for lawful operational use.  This opens up classified operations at IL 6 and IL 7 and provides flexible capabilities from across the resilient American tech stack, the DoW noted.  Anthropic, with their Claude model, walked away from Pentagon work.

Google has continued to provide its leading products for national security despite internal protest.  On April 27, more than 600 Google employees signed a letter against letting the Department of War use Gemini for classified work.  (That was down from 4,000 who came out against Project Maven in 2018.)  The signers of the letter wanted Google to stop classified work, making the argument that not participating in classified work would prevent any taint from autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.

The reality is that much of the classified work also centers on routine workflow, logistics, and enterprise activities – but carried out under classified status to not give away information that could compromise operational security.  These missions are far from the tip of the spear yet are integral to national security.

There are also vital classified military missions that support deterrence, defense of the homeland, and everyday life for Americans.  Nuclear command and control, theater missile defense, space surveillance, the emerging Golden Dome to deal with threats from China’s growing reconnaissance and missile threats: all these depend on classified networks.  For that matter, keeping GPS operational depends on classified activities. 

“There is no prize for second place in the global race for AI dominance,” as Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, said at the December AI launch. 

Google made the right choice.