Google DeepMind Staff Votes to Unionize Over Military AI Contracts

Employees at Google DeepMind in London have voted to unionize, driven by concerns over the company’s growing involvement in military AI contracts with the US and Israeli defense sectors. The workers are seeking formal recognition of the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as their joint representatives, a move they say is essential to enforcing ethical boundaries on artificial intelligence development.

In a letter to Google’s UK and Ireland managing director Debbie Weinstein, the staff called for collective bargaining rights. “Fundamentally, the push for unionization is about holding Google to its own ethical standards on AI, how they monetize it, what the products do, and who they work with,” says John Chadfield, national officer for technology at the CWU. “Through the process of unionization, workers are collectively in a much stronger place to put demands to an increasingly deaf management.”

The effort traces back to February 2025, when Alphabet removed a key pledge from its AI ethics guidelines , specifically, the commitment not to use AI for weapons development or surveillance. A DeepMind employee, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, told WIRED that this shift alarmed many inside the lab. “A lot of people here bought into the Google DeepMind tagline ‘to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity,’” they said. “The direction of travel is to further militarization of the AI models we’re building here.”

This unease is not isolated. In late February, staff at DeepMind and OpenAI signed an open letter supporting Anthropic after the US Department of Defense tried to label it a supply chain risk for refusing to allow its AI in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. Last week, The New York Times reported that Google had struck a deal allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose.” The US Department of Defense confirmed on Friday that it had agreements with seven leading AI firms , including Google, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Microsoft , to use their models on classified networks. Roughly 600 US-based Google employees reportedly signed a letter opposing the deal. “We think the ‘any lawful purpose’ clause is vague enough to be effectively meaningless,” the DeepMind employee added.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Previously, the company has defended such government partnerships. “We are proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security,” Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, told The New York Times last week. “We remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.”

In 2021, US-based Google employees formed the Alphabet Workers Union, though it is not recognized by Alphabet for collective bargaining. Still, it has successfully negotiated agreements for Google contractors.

According to the DeepMind employee, if the UK unionization effort succeeds, workers will likely demand that Google withdraw from its long-standing contract with the Israeli military, push for greater transparency on how AI products are used, and seek assurances regarding layoffs enabled by automation. If Google refuses to engage, the letter warns, employees will ask an arbitration committee to compel recognition.

Since early 2025, both Anthropic and OpenAI have announced major expansions of their London operations. The CWU hopes the DeepMind unionization effort will inspire similar action at those labs. “These conversations are happening,” Chadfield says. “The workers at other frontier labs have seen what Google DeepMind workers have done. They’ve come to us asking for help as well.”