- US launches GenAI.mil, giving three million DoD personnel access to Gemini for Government
- Experts warn that rapid injection risks can enable espionage if accounts or workstations are compromised
- Google’s history of employee protests over military projects raises questions about internal response
The US military gets Google’s Gemini. Earlier this week, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hesgeth released a new video on X announcing GenAI.mil, a platform that “puts the world’s most powerful frontier AI models directly into the hands of every US warfighter.”
The platform will be available to about three million employees of the US Department of Defense (or, as the current administration refers to it, the War Department), which includes both military and civilian personnel, all of whom will receive free training on how to use the tool.
The platform runs on Google’s Gemini for Government, a specialized enterprise AI platform and service designed specifically for US federal government agencies.
Google employees against warfare
In theory, this means the models are more secure, compliant and government-ready compared to the commercial, free-to-use alternatives. But if it is really the case – it will be revealed.
In his recipe, Cyber news claims that a lot can go wrong here. Despite everyone’s best efforts, today’s AI models are still susceptible to rapid injection attacks, which means that the country’s adversaries, such as Russia, China, North Korea or Iran, can have another path to data theft and cyberespionage.
“Any compromised user workstation or shared access card account now comes with a powerful AI console that can access internal context via integrations or provide a convenient way to summarize or transform stolen data,” Joshua Copeland, a cybersecurity expert at Tulane University, told the publication.
At the same time, the silence among Google’s employees is telling. Over the years, employees protested several times over the company’s involvement in military or defense purposes.
In 2018, they protested Project Maven, an AI project to analyze drone footage. Thousands of employees signed a letter protesting Google’s technology being used for warfare, while several employees resigned. Google eventually decided not to renew the contract.
Between 2021 and 2023, there was a $1.2 billion cloud and artificial intelligence contract with the Israeli government and military, Project Nimbus. Google employees protested internally and publicly, arguing that the technology could be used for surveillance, military operations or human rights abuses. Some were disciplined or fired after the activism escalated.
Via Cyber news
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