Last week, Google executives announced that they dismantled the company’s AI principles on weapons and surveillance and rolled back the company’s DEI programs to align with the racist policies and repression being institutionalized by the Trump administration. These decisions expose executives’ continued desire to prioritize profit via lucrative military contracts and alignment with this fascist administration over worker trust and safety.

Far from coincidental, these two moves are deeply related — SVP of People Operations Fiona Cicconi communicated internally that the move to dismantle DEI programs was made to insulate government contracts from “risk”. It is important to note that the bulk of government spending on technology services is spent through the military. In fact, of government contracts involving AI, 90% of contract value is from the Department of Defense. Google executives removed the AI principles that restricted them from building military and surveillance technology. What other reason could there be for this change, except that executives are actively positioning themselves to build these very lucrative products for state repression, upholding an apartheid regime, and warfighting?

What’s more, Google’s dismantling of its AI principles raises the question of whether Google is now looking to pivot to openly making custom AI for militaries. Beyond aiding and abetting militaries that weaponize AI via providing Google’s base technologies, building custom AI would implicate Google workers even more directly in developing tools of war and surveillance, fully bridging government and tech labor, and risking the use of joined data across both Google and the military surveillance apparatus.

To describe this as a “mask-off moment” would be an understatement. Despite all of their PR rhetoric about workplace diversity and inclusivity, and about countering bias in their technologies, Google executives only care to publicly demonstrate to those ideals when it is expedient and profitable for them. With this new administration, Google has proven that its “commitment” to just, ethical work was always toothless PR. Now, they are being explicit: they will follow the money to pad their bottom line, even if that money flows to military contracts.

For years, we have been warning that investment in government military contracts like Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google’s $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli military and government, would shift Google’s internal policies and political stances. These two changes cement that shift in workplace policies and culture. The decision of our employer to pivot towards military contracts is and has always been a workplace issue, for it impacts the core nature of our work, our experiences at work, and the policies under which we work. Workers did not join Google to work for a military contractor.

The betrayal of public and worker trust raises even deeper concerns. Millions of people globally trust Google with their personal data — photos of their loved ones, sensitive health information, detailed Search histories, and more. How can Google be trusted to protect its massive trove of data from the Trump administration’s policies targeting immigrants, trans people, pro-Palestine protesters, and communities of color, when its political and financial health are tied to the whims of the administration? When the federal agencies tasked with surveilling, imprisoning, and deporting immigrants have leverage over Google’s business, how can we trust that Google will safeguard our information and our communities?

When those in the administration that have illegally accessed our personal data expect Google to hand over public records, will principles regarding user privacy and information security also fold in favor of billions of dollars in federal military contracts?

All of these alarming decisions were made possible over this past year, when Google doubled down on Project Nimbus while Israel carried out a brutal, live-streamed genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza — and what we see now as a brazen Google Cloud sales demo. For 15 months, the Israeli military openly celebrated the indispensable role of Google AI and Google Cloud in the murder of Palestinians and flattening of Gaza. Google now has a clear case study to point to when selling to other militaries and authoritarian governments, including the Trump administration. Despite the knowledge that international human rights bodies are increasingly investigating the provision and deployment of AI for militaries as complicity in war crimes — which poses long-term financial and reputational risk to Google — Google is choosing short-term profit at any expense and now has evidence that their AI technology can be used in military kill-chains and can do so without immediate consequences from international human rights regulatory bodies.

Last week, Google executives announced that they are open for business to militaries and policing agencies around the globe, and established a record that they can resist pressure to pull out of these vicious contracts. It is up to workers to escalate that pressure and demand that they turn back away from this path to destruction. They have attempted to make us all complicit in becoming military contractors.

The inclusion of principles restricting military and surveillance technology in Google’s original AI principles were specific concessions made by the executives to worker outcry against Project Maven. Now they have betrayed the trust of workers by removing these clauses. The only way to prevent Google executives from turning their backs on basic ethics is for workers to organize a mass response to these betrayals.

Starting with Project Nimbus, we must take up our power and positionality as workers to ensure that the company does not devolve into a full-blown AI military contractor that helps to power the state violence, climate catastrophe, and worsening global crises of this century.

Google executives’ overreaction to worker protest against Project Nimbus — firing 50 of our colleagues en masse after they staged historic coast-to-coast sit-ins protesting the contract — proves that worker organizing is a major threat to their business model. They were attempting to “clean house” of any workers of conscience who would dare take principled action. In a moment when appealing to morality is becoming more and more fruitless, mass coordinated worker action is one of the few strategic avenues of resistance we have available to us.

If history has taught us anything, it is that these rollbacks are only the start of Google’s head-first dive into military contracting. We must resist complicity; we demand an end to the Project Nimbus contract. We will not be silenced or shocked into submission. As Google workers, we believe it is our moral and ethical responsibility to the world to fight back.

To our bosses and to the world: Make no mistake. Workers will keep building power together to control and redirect how our labor is used before Google technology becomes even more catastrophic to ourselves, our communities, and our world.