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In the wake of negative reactions to its participation in projects such as Project Maven and Dragonfly, Google will no longer seek a $ 10 billion contract with the Pentagon cloud.
"While we are working to support the US government with our cloud in many areas, we are not bidding on the JEDI contract because, first, we could not be sure that this would be consistent with our AI principles and secondly, we had determined that some parts of the contract were out of reach with the certifications of our current government, "said a door -spaces of Google in a statement.
Earlier this year, Google had to deal with the pressure from employees to abandon Project Maven, which needed to create AI systems capable of processing and analyzing drone images. for the Pentagon. Google "should not be involved in the war," employees said in a petition gathering more than 3,000 signatures. A dozen people have resigned before Google agrees to abandon the Maven project, but "continues its work with governments and the army."
This work will not include JEDI, which seeks to improve the Pentagon's cloud capabilities. As the Ministry of Defense pointed out in March, the agency does not have "a coordinated enterprise-level approach to cloud infrastructure, [which] it is virtually impossible for our fighters and warlords to make critical decisions based on data at "mission speed", which has a negative impact on results.
"The fighters and their leaders are forced to choose between giving up their abilities or engaging in a long process of acquisition, deployment and supply," the DOD continued. "A fragmented and largely on-premise computer and storage solution forces the fighter into tedious data and application management processes, compromising his ability to quickly access, manipulate, and analyze data at home and at its tactical edge, optimized to support extensive cross-domain analytics with the aid of advanced features such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, to meet current and future needs in the field. of fight. "
According to Bloomberg, who first announced the news, the pressure on employees contributed to Google 's decision regarding JEDI. In its statement, Google stated that it would have preferred that JEDI be open to several providers in order to "propose a convincing solution for some of its parts".
"Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the interest of government agencies because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload. At the time when new technologies become more available, customers should be able to continue to pursue our strategic work to help state, local, and federal customers modernize their infrastructure and meet their critical needs. "
The Defense Department, however, believes that working with multiple vendors will slow down the process, says Bloomberg. Final submissions are due on October 12
Meanwhile, Google is also under review for work on Project Dragonfly, a version of Google Search that complies with Internet censorship requirements imposed by the Chinese government. Vice President Mike Pence recently asked Google to stop working on Dragonfly, claiming that the state of surveillance in China "is becoming more and more invasive and pervasive, often with the help of American technology ".
It is possible that China has already infiltrated US technology, according to another Bloomberg report, according to which Chinese spies would implement hardware in Apple and Amazon products. Both companies deny that this happened.
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