Cybersecurity Policy Report, Sen. Warren Questions DoD, Contractors About AI-Powered Domestic Surveillance, (Jul 9, 2026)
Organizations Mentioned:Amazon Web Services, Inc. | Windermere Racing, LLC | Wintherix, LLC
The opaque terms of its contracts with AI (artificial intelligence) companies raises concerns that the Department of Defense might use AI for domestic surveillance, according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).
Sen. Warren requested details about the contracts in letters to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and eight AI developers with DoD contracts—Google LLC, SpacexAI, OpenAI, Nvidia Corp., Reflection AI, Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon Web Services, and Oracle Corp.
DoD announced contracts with the seven providers in May but offered scant details about how the companies’ AI models would be used, Sen. Warren noted in her letter to Secretary Hegseth.
“The speed with which the Department is integrating AI into both day-to-day work and national security operations is alarming given that the Department has yet to provide Congress or the public with any meaningful details on how it plans to use these tools and what testing and safeguards have been put in place to prevent mistakes or misuse,” she said.
She recalled that DoD had sought to cancel its contracts with Anthropic and designated the company as a national security threat because Anthropic objected to the department using its AI models for domestic surveillance (CPR, April 9).
“The Department regularly acquires vast commercial datasets which include personal data on American citizens, referred to among the intelligence community as incidental collection,” she said.
She set a July 20 deadline for Mr. Hegseth to provide details about its AI contracts, including whether those contracts allowed for “incidental, nontargeted surveillance.”
She sought similar information in her letter to the AI companies with DoD contracts. “I am concerned that your company may have entered into an agreement with Secretary Hegseth that gives him and other Trump Administration officials free rein to engage in domestic surveillance—including spying on U.S. citizens exercising their legal rights,” she told the companies’ chief executive officers.
“Even contractual terms which ostensibly include prohibitions on domestic surveillance along with other guardrails can in fact give DoD significant leeway to conduct mass surveillance,” she said. “As long as the Department can make a plausible case that its conduct is not ‘unlawful,’ it appears to be free to use your technology in a manner that harms civilian populations and endangers civil liberties. That should concern you and all your employees.”
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