Boston Dynamics employees petition against sale of robot dogs to ICE
More than 300 signatures fail to halt 1.3-million-dollar contract for four robots, executives promise no weaponization while the optional arm opens doors
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arstechnica.com
More than 300 employees at Boston Dynamics have signed a petition demanding that executives halt the sale of the company's robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The letter, submitted in early September and shared with the Boston Globe and WBUR, describes its signatories as workers who enjoy showing off their work to friends, family and the world. Boston Dynamics employs about 1,400 people; half the signatures were anonymous.
Three weeks after the petition reached executives, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract worth $1.3 million to Radeco, a Connecticut company, to supply ICE with four modified Boston Dynamics quadrupeds. Radeco markets the machines as a platform named Cerberus. The contract justifies the purchase as support for the Homeland Security Task Forces' mission to counter illicit cross-border tunnels and dismantle smuggling and trafficking networks run by cartels and transnational criminal organisations. The advertised capabilities include radiation, toxic gas and explosives detection, an oxygen sensor for confined spaces such as tunnels, a 30-times zoom camera, 360-degree cameras and infrared thermal imaging. The robots navigate complex industrial environments autonomously and execute, in the contract's words, "repeatable autonomous missions with minimal human intervention." An optional arm manipulates objects and opens doors.
Executives have decided the sale proceeds, maintaining the robots will not be weaponised. "Spot robots are tools that help keep people out of harm's way," a company spokesperson said, adding that if a robot can help keep people safe it should be used, regardless of political implications or personal feelings about the organisations involved. The robots would primarily serve ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit, which the Brennan Center for Justice documented conducting deportations and workplace raids between 2018 and 2021. Those operations were halted by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas early in the Biden administration; under Trump's second term, an executive order redefined the unit's primary mission and diverted thousands of its agents to immigration enforcement.
Three hundred signatures from a workforce of 1,400, half of them anonymous, have not stopped the sale. The arm is optional. It opens doors.