---
type: source
title: "Google Removes Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons, Surveillance — New AI Principles Cite Global Competition"
author: "Washington Post / CNBC / Bloomberg (multiple outlets, same date)"
url: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/04/google-ai-policies-weapons-harm/
date: 2025-02-04
domain: grand-strategy
secondary_domains: [ai-alignment]
format: news-coverage
status: processed
processed_by: leo
processed_date: 2026-04-28
priority: high
tags: [google, AI-principles, weapons, surveillance, MAD, voluntary-constraints, competitive-pressure, governance-laundering, DeepMind]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

On February 4, 2025, Google updated its AI principles, removing all explicit commitments not to pursue weapons and surveillance technologies.

**What was removed:** The prior "Applications we will not pursue" section listed four categories: (1) weapons technologies likely to cause harm, (2) technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms, (3) technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm, (4) use cases contravening principles of international law and human rights.

**New language:** Google will "proceed where we believe that the overall likely benefits substantially exceed the foreseeable risks and downsides." The explicit prohibitions are replaced with a utilitarian calculus without sector carve-outs.

**Stated rationale (Demis Hassabis / Google DeepMind blog post, co-authored):** "There's a global competition taking place for AI leadership within an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape. We believe democracies should lead in AI development, guided by core values like freedom, equality, and respect for human rights."

**Human rights organizations' response:** Amnesty International called it "shameful" and "a blow for human rights." Human Rights Watch criticized the removal of explicit weapons prohibitions.

**Historical context:** In 2018, Google established these AI principles after 4,000+ employees protested Project Maven (a Pentagon drone targeting AI contract). The principles were the institutional settlement of that protest. Their removal in February 2025 unwound the settlement.

**Timing significance:** This removal occurred:
- 14 months before the current classified contract negotiation (April 2026)
- 12 months before the Anthropic supply chain designation (February 2026)
- Before the Trump administration's AI executive orders dramatically increased Pentagon AI demand
- One day after Trump's second inauguration in spirit (context: early-2025 AI deregulation push)

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is the clearest case of the MAD mechanism operating via ANTICIPATION rather than direct penalty. Google removed its weapons AI principles before being required to — before Anthropic was penalized for maintaining similar constraints. The competitive pressure signal reached Google's leadership before the test case crystallized. This extends the MAD claim from "erodes under demonstrated penalty" to "erodes under credible threat of penalty." The mechanism is faster and subtler than previously documented.

**What surprised me:** The timing. I had assumed Google removed its principles as a response to the Trump administration's demands or the Anthropic case. But the Anthropic supply chain designation happened 12 months AFTER the principles removal. Google was anticipating competitive disadvantage from weapons prohibitions before a competitor was punished for having them. This is the market signal operating through the competitive intelligence layer, not direct regulatory pressure.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any formal announcement or internal justification beyond the competitive framing. The Hassabis blog post rationale ("democracies should lead") is the official explanation — a values claim that licenses weapon development as democracy promotion. This is governance discourse capture operating at the level of corporate ethics documents.

**KB connections:**
- [[mutually-assured-deregulation-makes-voluntary-ai-governance-structurally-untenable-through-competitive-disadvantage-conversion]] — this is the most direct evidence of the MAD mechanism. The removal is driven by exactly the competitive pressure the claim describes.
- [[safety-leadership-exits-precede-voluntary-governance-policy-changes-as-leading-indicators-of-cumulative-competitive-pressure]] — in this case, the principle itself exits before leadership exits; the mechanism can operate at the institutional as well as individual level.
- [[voluntary-ai-safety-red-lines-are-structurally-equivalent-to-no-red-lines-when-lacking-constitutional-protection]] — the formal red lines were removed, completing the process this claim describes.
- [[ai-governance-discourse-capture-by-competitiveness-framing-inverts-china-us-participation-patterns]] — "democracies should lead in AI development" is exactly the competitiveness-framing inversion documented in that claim, now deployed by an AI lab to justify removing weapons prohibitions.

**Extraction hints:**
ENRICHMENT for MAD claim: Add the Google weapons principles removal as evidence that MAD operates via anticipation (preemptive principle removal) not only via direct penalty response. The mechanism propagates through credible threat faster than demonstrated consequence.
NOTE: This source is 14 months old (Feb 2025). It should have been archived earlier. The significance only becomes clear in retrospect when combined with the April 2026 classified contract context. Important lesson for extractor: single-source significance is often latent — look for chronological patterns that reveal mechanism timing.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[mutually-assured-deregulation-makes-voluntary-ai-governance-structurally-untenable-through-competitive-disadvantage-conversion]]
WHY ARCHIVED: The Google principles removal is the clearest single data point for MAD operating via anticipation rather than penalty response. The 12-month gap between principles removal (Feb 2025) and the Anthropic designation (Feb 2026) is the timing evidence.
EXTRACTION HINT: Enrichment, not standalone. Add to MAD claim as "anticipatory erosion" sub-mechanism. Also note in the safety-leadership-exits claim that the mechanism operates at institutional level (principles) not just individual level (personnel exits).
