360+ Google and OpenAI Employees Tell Their Bosses to Back Anthropic

The AI industry just drew a line in the sand — and it's the workers drawing it, not the executives.

✊ 360+ Google and OpenAI Employees Tell Their Bosses to Back Anthropic

Decoded: More than 300 Google employees and over 60 OpenAI employees signed an open letter urging executives to stand with Anthropic against the U.S. Department of War's demand for unrestricted AI access — specifically for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. "They're trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in," the letter reads. Sam Altman publicly said the Pentagon "shouldn't be threatening DPA against these companies," and an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed they share Anthropic's red lines.

Why it matters: Cross-company employee solidarity at this scale is nearly unprecedented in tech. If Google and OpenAI leadership formally align with Anthropic, the Pentagon loses its leverage — and a binding industry norm against autonomous weapons and mass surveillance starts to calcify.

🇨🇳 DeepSeek Locks Nvidia and AMD Out of V4 — Hands Huawei the Keys

Decoded: Reuters reported that DeepSeek withheld early access to its upcoming V4 flagship from Nvidia and AMD, breaking with longstanding industry practice, and gave Chinese chipmakers including Huawei several weeks of advance optimization time instead. The move comes amid allegations that DeepSeek trained on Nvidia Blackwell chips that were banned from China under U.S. export controls.

Why it matters: If V4 launches fully optimized for Huawei hardware, it signals that China's domestic chip stack can support frontier AI models — and gives Beijing a credible path to AI independence that bypasses U.S. export controls entirely. The chip war just became a model war.

That's your Saturday signal. See you tomorrow.

— The AI Decoded Team