OpenAI robotics lead Caitlin Kalinowski quits in response to Pentagon deal

Hardware director Caitlin Kalinowski announced today that, in response to OpenAI’s controversial deal with the Department of Defense, she has resigned from her role leading the company’s robotics team.

“This was not an easy decision,” Kalinowski said in a social media post. “AI plays an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human consent are lines that deserved more deliberation than they received.”

Kalinowski, who previously led the team building augmented reality glasses at Meta, joined OpenAI in November 2024. In her announcement today, she emphasized that the decision was “about principles, not people” and said she had “deep respect” for CEO Sam Altman and the OpenAI team.

In a follow-up post to XKalinowski added: “To be clear, my problem is that the announcement was rushed without any guardrails being defined. It is primarily a governance matter. These are too important to rush any deals or announcements.”

An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Kalinowski’s departure to TechCrunch.

“We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible use of AI in national security while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons,” the company said in a statement. “We recognize that people have strong opinions on these issues and we will continue to engage in discussions with workers, government, civil society and communities around the world.”

OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon was announced just over a week ago, after talks between the Pentagon and Anthropic collapsed when the AI ​​company tried to negotiate safeguards that would prevent its technology from being used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon subsequently labeled Anthropic as a supply chain risk. (Anthropic said it will challenge the designation in court; in the meantime, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have said they will continue to make Anthropic’s Claude available to non-defense customers.)

Then OpenAI quickly announced its own agreement that would allow the technology to be used in classified environments. As executives tried to explain the deal on social media, the company described it as a “more comprehensive, multi-layered approach” that relies not only on contract language but also on technical safeguards to protect red lines similar to Anthropic’s.

Nevertheless, the controversy appears to have damaged OpenAI’s reputation among some consumers, with ChatGPT takedowns increasing 295% and Claude rising to the top of the App Store charts. As of Saturday afternoon, Claude and ChatGPT remain the US App Store’s number one and number two free apps, respectively.