Hundreds of Boston Dynamics Workers Begged Bosses to Kill an ICE Robot Dog Deal, and the Company Said No

More than 300 people at Boston Dynamics, out of roughly 1,400, put their names to a petition asking executives to stop a deal that sends the company's Spot robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Leadership read it, stood by the deal, and told staff to accept it.

The petition went to executives in early September, with about half of the signatures anonymous, and employees shared copies with The Boston Globe and WBUR. One in five people at the company signed a letter telling its bosses the deal was a mistake, and the bosses kept it.

What ICE is buying

On September 25, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $1.3 million contract to Radeco, a Connecticut company, to supply ICE with four modified Spot robots it markets as Cerberus. They are pitched to detect radiation, toxic gas leaks and explosive threats in cities or disaster zones, and to handle remote observation and inspection.

The kit includes an oxygen sensor for checking air in confined spaces such as tunnels, a 30x zoom camera, 360-degree cameras, infrared thermal imaging and an optional arm that can open doors. The robots can run repeatable autonomous missions with little human input. ICE justified the purchase as support for task forces fighting cross-border smuggling tunnels and cartel-run trafficking networks.

The Hyundai problem

The petition's sharpest line points at Boston Dynamics' own owner. On September 4, 2025, an ICE raid at the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America facility in Georgia detained 475 workers, most of them South Korean. Hyundai bought Boston Dynamics in June 2021.

"We cannot be proud of working at Boston Dynamics when that work is being used by a government agency that brutalizes civilians, including some of our own colleagues at Hyundai," the employees wrote. They described friends and family asking, "in disbelief and horror," whether the news was true and how they could live with themselves if it was.

They also made a business case. "The risk for Boston Dynamics is simply too great to continue with this deal," the petition says, warning that the company would lose teammates and become a less attractive employer as it scales.

Leadership's answer

Amanda McMaster, the former interim CEO, emailed staff that the decision fits the company's "purpose of ethically advancing intelligent machines in service of humanity," and asked workers to "respect and accept this decision, even if you do not agree with it." She pointed to sale terms banning use of Spot to harm or intimidate people or animals, or as a weapon. Boston Dynamics has previously signed an open letter against weaponizing general-purpose robots.

A spokesperson told Ars that Spot robots "help keep people out of harm's way," and that if a robot can keep people safe, "we believe it should." The company says the machines will mostly serve ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit, which focuses on transnational crime, and that it will mainly provide technical support. It says DHS and HSI have followed its terms for years, and that any misuse would mean voided warranties, cut software updates, terminated licenses and likely legal action.

That reassurance leans on HSI staying a crime unit. The Brennan Center documented HSI running workplace raids and deportations from 2018 to 2021, and since January 2025 HSI has diverted thousands of agents to immigration enforcement after an executive order redefined its main mission, according to the Immigration Policy Tracking Project.

Fights over where tech hardware ends up usually happen outside the building, like the protesters who confronted Nvidia over its chips turning up in Russian drones. At Boston Dynamics, the objection comes from inside, at a company building a $100 million robotics and AI facility in Waltham with 1,250 new jobs planned by 2033, and whose parent still plans to deploy thousands of its Atlas humanoids at US plants.

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