Google has expanded its partnership with the US Department of Defense, launching eight pre-built Gemini AI agents on the Pentagon's enterprise AI portal GenAI.mil — a platform now available to more than 3 million civilian and military personnel for unclassified work.

What Google Launched

The eight agents handle common government workflows including document drafting, research support, and administrative task automation. Alongside them, Google introduced Agent Designer, a no-code tool that lets DoD staff build custom agents via natural language prompts — no engineering required.

The platform has already seen over 1.2 million unique users since its December 2025 launch. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael said the Pentagon is "starting with unclassified because that's where most of the users are," with classified network access under discussion for future phases.

The Anthropic Context

The expansion comes one day after Anthropic filed two federal lawsuits against the Trump administration, challenging the Pentagon's decision to designate the company a "supply chain risk" — a label previously reserved for foreign-linked entities. The designation bars Anthropic from the US defense contractor ecosystem.

The fallout began when contract renegotiations stalled over safeguards. Anthropic refused to remove restrictions on its Claude model being used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Pentagon insisted on access for "all lawful purposes."

Over 30 researchers from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, including Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic's lawsuit.

What It Means

With Anthropic effectively sidelined, Google and OpenAI are now positioned to dominate Pentagon AI deployments at both unclassified and future classified tiers. The episode highlights a growing tension in the US AI industry: defense contracts versus ethical safeguards.