Google wants to work with Pentagon again, despite employee concerns

Three years after an employee revolt forced Google to stop working on Project Maven, a Pentagon program that relies on artificial intelligence to interpret video footage and refine the targeting of drone strikes, the company “ is aggressively pursuing a major contract to supply its technology to the US military “, explains the New York Times.

The project of Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability aims to modernize the Pentagon cloud, and support the use of artificial intelligence to gain an advantage on the battlefield. It replaces a contract with Microsoft canceled this summer following a long legal battle with Amazon. Google did not compete with Microsoft on this contract after the outcry around Maven.

The new project replaces the common defense infrastructure of companies, or JEDI, now discontinued, Pentagon cloud computing which was estimated at 10 billion dollars over 10 years.

The Pentagon’s restart of its cloud computing project gave Google a chance to participate in the tender, and the company “ went rushed to prepare a proposal to be presented to Defense officials, according to four people familiar with the matter “, specifies the NYT:

” In September , Google’s cloud unit has made this a priority, declaring an emergency “Code Yellow”, an internal designation of importance that has allowed the company to remove other assignments from engineers and focus them on the military project, said two of those people. “