If Google scores the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract it will set the company directly at odds with its more pacifist but very vocal employees who don’t want their work to actually kill anyone.

In 2018, thousands of Google employees signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in Project Maven, a military program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to refine the targeting of drone strikes. Google management caved and agreed to not renew the contract once it expired.

This also  led Google to create guidelines for the ethical use of artificial intelligence, which prohibit the use of its technology for weapons or surveillance, and hastened a shake-up of its cloud computing business.

However, the bid for the new Pentagon contract could test the boundaries of those AI principles, which have set it apart from other tech giants that routinely seek military and intelligence work. The military wants to modernise the Pentagon's cloud technology and support the use of artificial intelligence to gain an advantage on the battlefield.

The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability is a replacement for a contract with Microsoft that was cancelled this summer amid a lengthy legal battle with Amazon. Google did not compete against Microsoft for that contract after the uproar over Project Maven.

The Pentagon's restart of its cloud computing project has given Google a chance to jump back into the bidding, and the company has raced to prepare a proposal to present to Défense officials.

In September, Google's cloud unit made it a priority, declaring an emergency "Code Yellow", an internal designation of importance that allowed the company to pull engineers off other assignments and focus them on the military project, two of those people said.