Trump says Google CEO Sundar Pichai told him he is 'totally committed to the U.S. military' (GOOG, GOOGL)

Donald Trump Sundar Pichai

US President Donald Trump tweeted that he met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday.
"Just met with Sundar Pichai, President of Google, who is obviously doing quite well. He state strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. military, not the Chinese Military..." Trump tweeted.
News that Pichai would be speaking with the president had not been announced before the tweet.
According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Pichai was set to meet with top military official, Gen. Joseph Dunford, whose comment about Google’s artificial intelligence work in China "indirectly benefit[ing] the Chinese military" initiated the discussion.

US President Donald Trump tweeted that he met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday.

"Just met with Sundar Pichai, President of Google, who is obviously doing quite well. He state strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. military, not the Chinese Military..." Trump tweeted.

In a second tweet, Trump said that the two also "discussed political fairness and various things that Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!"

Just met with @SundarPichai, President of @Google, who is obviously doing quite well. He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2019

News that Pichai would be speaking with the president had not been announced before the tweet.

According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Pichai was set to meet with top military official, Gen. Joseph Dunford, whose comment about Google's artificial-intelligence work in China "indirectly benefit[ing] the Chinese military" initiated the discussion.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider on Wednesday: "We were pleased to have productive conversations with the President about investing in the future of the American workforce, the growth of emerging technologies and our ongoing commitment to working with the U.S. government."

Last week Google denied working with the Chinese military after a tweet from Trump accused it of doing so.

Google is helping China and their military, but not the U.S. Terrible! The good news is that they helped Crooked Hillary Clinton, and not Trump....and how did that turn out?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2019

"We are not working with the Chinese military," Google said.

Google — which opened an AI lab in Beijing in late 2017 — says on its website that its AI activities in China focus on "education, research on natural language understanding and market algorithms, and development of globally available tools."

Google has come under pressure by US lawmakers following the company's decision last year not to renew its contract to build AI tools for the Pentagon, known as Project Maven. The decision came amid intense internal backlash at Google from employees who condemned the military work.

Google also bowed out of a prospective cloud contract with the Pentagon in October worth billions, known as JEDI. Around the same time, the company was working a search engine for the Chinese market — a project the company has since said it had "no plans to launch."

Notably, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were not invited to Washington on Wednesday, presumably because both chief execs have been outspoken about their commitment to working with the US military.

Last October, around the time Google decided to ditch its military contracts, Bezos said in an interview: "This is a great country and it does need to be defended."

In February, Nadella confirmed in a CNN Business interview that he does not plan to withdraw from its military contracts.

"We made a principled decision that we're not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy," Nadella said.

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