Google faces backlash over Pentagon AI deal

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Despite opposition from its employees, Google signed an AI contract deal with the Pentagon. Foreign governments in Europe and Asia are now seriously reevaluating doing business with firms linked to the U.S. government. 

The growing pattern of U.S. AI firms deepening ties with the Pentagon has escalated the urgency for European and Asian governments to find alternatives that are clean from American influence for their tech needs.

Google faces backlash over Pentagon AI deal

In 2025, the Pentagon signed agreements of up to $200 million each with major AI companies, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Reportedly, the Pentagon attempted to make versions of OpenAI and Anthropic available on classified networks without the standard restrictions they apply to users. 

Google’s latest Pentagon deal reportedly drew significant criticism from its own employees. The company previously faced a major internal revolt over Project Maven, a 2018 Pentagon drone-imagery contract that it ultimately chose not to renew after thousands of employees signed petitions and some resigned in protest. 

The new deal allows the Pentagon to use Google’s AI ​for “any lawful government purpose”, but also includes safeguards such as “the parties agree that the AI System is not intended for, ​and should not be used for, domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (including target selection) without appropriate human oversight and control.”

However, the ‌agreement also ⁠says Google does not have the right to control or veto lawful government operational decision-making. 

The primary cause of concern for American citizens, foreign partners, and adversaries is that there is a gray area as to what constitutes lawful government use. As Cryptopolitan reported, the Pentagon and the Trump admin publicly disputed with Anthropic about limits that the AI firm insisted on.

The race to make Europe great again is on

Foreign governments do not trust that U.S.-based AI companies can serve foreign clients without also serving U.S. national security interests. The 2018 CLOUD Act that compels American tech firms to hand over data to U.S. law enforcement, even when that data is stored on foreign soil, only strengthens this concern. 

France, for instance, announced last year that its Health Data Hub would leave Microsoft Azure for a domestically operated cloud company called Scaleway. 

Scaleway was also among four companies that won a separate €180 million sovereign cloud tender from the European Commission, worth roughly $211 million. Amazon’s AWS European Sovereign Cloud notably did not make the cut.

The European Commission’s tender carried the additional goal of encouraging the market to “offer sovereign digital solutions that comply with EU laws and values.”

France is also replacing Windows with Linux across government systems. Austria, Denmark, Italy, and Germany are swapping Microsoft’s productivity suite for open-source tools like LibreOffice. As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, Germany has decided not to even consider Palantir for its military, at least for now, according to Vice Admiral Thomas Daum. 

The EU’s Apply AI Strategy, published in March 2026, promotes what it calls a “buy European” approach to AI procurement. 

However, France’s domestic intelligence agency recently renewed a contract with Palantir despite the push to reduce reliance on U.S. providers and Palantir’s chief executive, Alex Karp’s, controversial opinions on defense technology. 

European search engine Qwant partnered with German nonprofit Ecosia to launch Staan, a privacy-focused search index, but Ecosia has roughly 20 million users compared to Google’s billions. 

Scaleway and OVHCloud are credible cloud providers, but neither is near the scale of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Whether or not these alternatives can compete on capability remains an open question.

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