Top OpenAI executive departs post over Pentagon deal

A hardware leader at OpenAI has left the AI firm in the wake of the company’s recent partnership with the Pentagon, citing concerns over surveillance and autonomous weapons.

Caitlin Kalinowski, who was a member of OpenAI’s technical staff overseeing hardware, announced Friday that “principle, not people” led to the decision.

“This wasn’t an easy call. AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got,” Kalinowski wrote Friday on the social platform X, adding she has “deep respect for Sam and the team” and is “proud of what we built together.”

OpenAI announced earlier this month it reached an agreement with the Pentagon to deploy its AI products in the defense agency, just hours after talks for a similar deal between AI firm Anthropic and the Department of Defense (DOD) fell apart.

Kalinowski later said she took issue with the deal being “rushed without the guardrails defined.”

“It’s a governance concern first and foremost,” she said in another post. “These are too important for deals or announcements to be rushed.”

According to Kalinowski’s public LinkedIn profile, she joined OpenAI as a technical team member in November 2024, leading the company’s robotics organization. She previously helped build and scale Meta’s alternate reality glasses and held roles at Oculus VR and Apple.

Kalinowski’s criticism follows a wave of broader backlash against OpenAI, which saw uninstalls of its flagship ChatGPT app rise by nearly 300 percent in the day after the deal was announced.

At the same time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman detailed new additions to the Pentagon agreements and acknowledged the company “shouldn’t have rushed” to get the deal done. The new additions centered around the use of AI for mass surveillance, which was a red line for Anthropic during its negotiations.

OpenAI’s amended agreement now includes language that is “consistent with applicable laws,” Altman said, including the declaration that the “AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.”

“For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information,” Altman said, adding it is “critical to protect the civil liberties of Americans.”

The Pentagon also confirmed to OpenAI that its services will not be used by the department’s intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.

As for Anthropic, the Pentagon informed the Claude developer late last week that the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk “effective immediately.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company will fight the designation in court.

Amodei also argued the designation only applies to DOD customers, not Anthropic’s other contracts. It is not clear how civilian government agencies will respond, though some already removed Claude from their workflows following President Trump’s orders to cease use of Anthropic products.

Other tech giants, including Microsoft, Google and Amazon, said last week that Anthropic’s tools will remain available on their platforms for work that does not involve the Pentagon.

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