Caitlin Kalinowski announced today that she has resigned from her role leading OpenAI’s hardware team. Her decision came in response to the company’s controversial agreement with the Department of Defense.
“This wasn’t an easy call,” Kalinowski said in a social media post. “AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.”
Kalinowski previously led the team building augmented reality glasses at Meta before joining OpenAI in November 2024. In her announcement, she emphasized that the decision was about principle, not people, and expressed deep respect for CEO Sam Altman and the OpenAI team.
In a follow-up post, Kalinowski added, “To be clear, my issue is that the announcement was rushed without the guardrails defined. It’s a governance concern first and foremost. These are too important for deals or announcements to be rushed.”
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Kalinowski’s departure. The company stated, “We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons. We recognize that people have strong views about these issues and we will continue to engage in discussion with employees, government, civil society and communities around the world.”
OpenAI’s agreement with the Pentagon was announced just over a week ago. This followed discussions between the Pentagon and another AI company, Anthropic, which fell through as Anthropic tried to negotiate safeguards preventing its technology from being used in mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon subsequently designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Anthropic said it will fight the designation in court. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon stated they will continue to make Anthropic’s Claude available to non-defense customers.
Following the breakdown with Anthropic, OpenAI quickly announced its own agreement, allowing its technology to be used in classified environments. The company described the deal as taking a more expansive, multi-layered approach that relies on both contract language and technical safeguards to protect its stated red lines.
Nonetheless, the controversy appears to have impacted OpenAI’s reputation among some consumers. Reports indicate ChatGPT uninstalls surged significantly, while Anthropic’s Claude climbed to the top of the App Store charts. As of Saturday afternoon, Claude and ChatGPT remained the U.S. App Store’s number one and number two free apps, respectively.
This post has been updated to correct its description of Kalinowski’s role with OpenAI.