Boston Dynamics Staff Petition to Block $1.3 Million Robot Dog Sale to ICE

A $1.3 million Department of Homeland Security contract has split Boston Dynamics from its own workforce. On September 25, DHS awarded the sum to Radeco, a Connecticut company, to supply ICE with modified versions of Boston Dynamics' quadruped robots—and the deal's opponents work inside the robotics firm itself.

More than 300 employees signed a petition calling on executives to halt the sale, according to copies shared with The Boston Globe and WBUR. Half of the signatures were anonymous. The workers sent the letter to company leadership in early September, weeks before the contract award surfaced publicly.

Executives stood by the deal. They said the robots would not be weaponized, while declining to scrap the arrangement that has now put the company at the center of a fight over who gets to buy its machines.

What did the employees say?

The petition pulled no punches about the personal toll the deal has taken inside the company. "Many of us have gotten messages from friends and family, asking us in disbelief and horror if this news is true, and how we can live with ourselves if it is," the letter reads. "The risk for Boston Dynamics is simply too great to continue with this deal."

That closing line frames the argument in terms the company's leadership can weigh: risk. The signers aren't only making a moral case. They're telling executives that the reputational cost of supplying ICE could outweigh the revenue from a $1.3 million contract—a rounding error for a firm owned by one of the world's largest technology companies.

How the deal is structured

Boston Dynamics isn't selling to ICE directly. The DHS award went to Radeco, based in Connecticut, which will provide the immigration agency with modified versions of the quadruped robots. That intermediary structure matters. It puts distance between the manufacturer and the end user, but as the petition shows, it hasn't shielded the company's own employees from the consequences of the arrangement.

The contract listing appeared on sam.gov, the federal procurement portal, tying the dollar figure and the award date to the public record rather than to speculation.

Why the anonymity matters

Half the signatures on the petition were anonymous. That detail says something about the climate inside Boston Dynamics. Employees willing to publicly challenge their employer's commercial decisions numbered in the hundreds; those who wanted their names attached were half that. The letter still reached its audience—executives received it in early September, and two major Boston news outlets, The Boston Globe and WBUR, published it on October 23.

What happens next

For now, the executives' position holds: the deal stands, and the robots will not be weaponized. The workers' letter, with its blunt warning about risk, remains on the record—and the company now faces the question of whether employee resistance will shape future government sales, or whether the $1.3 million ICE contract marks the first of many deals that its own staff will try to block.