OpenAI’s amended Pentagon contract, made public earlier this week, is drawing sustained criticism from legal experts who argue the prohibition on domestic surveillance may not reach as far as the company suggests.
The amendment was announced Monday, March 2-3. It formally excludes the NSA from contract access and establishes explicit prohibitions on using OpenAI’s technology for domestic surveillance. According to OpenAI’s official statement, the company negotiated these terms explicitly. What it didn’t publish is the full contract. The full text of the contract has not been made public.
The legal concern is specific. Legal experts, including analysts cited by NBC News, argue that references to Executive Order 12333 may still permit certain surveillance activities — a concern OpenAI has not directly addressed. EO 12333 governs foreign intelligence collection and has historically been read broadly. Its presence in a domestic surveillance prohibition creates interpretive ambiguity that critics say undermines what the amendment claims to accomplish.
Hundreds of OpenAI and Google employees signed an open letter opposing government AI deployments without sufficient civil liberties protections. That letter preceded the amendment. According to Axios, the amendment had not yet been formally signed as of Tuesday — which means the document OpenAI published may represent an agreed framework rather than an executed contract modification.
Katrina Mulligan, OpenAI’s head of global affairs, confirmed the surveillance carve-outs were negotiated directly. That’s meaningful. Whether it closes the EO 12333 gap depends on contract language nobody outside the parties has read.