Exclusive — House Technology Chair: Google’s Drone Contract Refusal ‘Awfully Close to Being Un-American’

Google’s decision to not renew its artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon “comes awfully close to being un-American,” says Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Google employees “basically threatened the management who immediately rolled over,” Smith told Breitbart News in a wide-ranging interview.

“The employees said, ‘Well we don’t want to do anything that will help the military in any way. We have some indirect contracts with the military where we give them some information and we want to stop that’.”

“Of course, it took the management a millisecond, well actually a few hours, to roll over and capitulate,” Smith added.
According to The Hill, last month “Google, facing internal pressure, told employees… that it would not renew its contract with the Defense Department’s flagship AI program, known as Project Maven, after it expires in 2019…”

The contract sparked a public relations crisis after a handful of employees reportedly resigned in protest and thousands of employees signed a letter urging the company’s CEO not to allow Google to be drafted into the “business of war.”

“Now that comes awfully close to being un-American,” says Smith. “For the management of Google to be rolled so easily by their employees and not stand up for principle, not say we need to help everybody, and not defend helping the military who after all defends us every day of the year, was again an example of bias that we don’t need,” the congressman concluded.

Amanda House is Breitbart News’ Deputy Political Editor. You can follow her on Twitter at @AmandaLeeHouse and Instagram. 

Charlie Nash contributed to this story.