Pentagon launches new Gemini based AI platform

(Image credit: Shutterstock/mundissima)

US launches GenAI.mil, giving three million DoD personnel access to Gemini for Government
Experts warn prompt‑injection risks could enable espionage if accounts or workstations are compromised
Google’s history of employee protests over military projects raises questions about internal reaction

The US military is getting Google’s Gemini. Earlier this week, US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hesgeth, published 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 American warrior.”

The platform will be available to roughly three million employees of the US Department of Defense (or, as the current administration refers to it, the Department of War), 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, that means that the models are more secure, compliant, and government-ready, compared to the commercial, free-to-use alternatives. However, if that really is the case - remains to be seen.

In its writeup, Cybernews argues that a lot could go wrong here. Despite everyone’s best efforts, today’s AI models are still susceptible to prompt injection attacks, which means that the country’s adversaries, such as Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran, could get another avenue for data theft and cyber-espionage.

“Any compromised user workstation or common access card account now comes with a powerful AI console that might have access to 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 of Google’s employees is telling. Over the years, the employees protested multiple 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 objecting to Google’s tech 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 AI 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 activism escalated.

Via Cybernews

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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