Protesters filled Phillips Hall 101 on Thursday to voice their opposition to a “Tech Talk” hosted by defense technology firm Anduril, an event intended to engage with Cornell engineers and promote employment opportunities within the company.
The session, which was originally scheduled to last two hours and have a Q&A period, lasted only seven and a half minutes, after which protesters held up signs and shouted at the presenters.
As students entered the lecture hall, protesters distributed leaflets featuring one of Anduril’s newest defense technologies, the “Fury,” described on the flyers as an AI-powered, semi-autonomous unmanned combat aerial vehicle designed to operate alongside a manned aircraft, identifying threats and providing protection.
The leaflet’s caption reads, “Does this look sleek? Soon, it’ll slaughter a family.”
It goes on to state that Anduril manufactures drones and surveillance technology for use at the U.S. border, “threatening the lives of migrants fleeing violence,” and claims that President Trump has permitted the company to sell AI-driven weaponry to what the leaflet describes as “genocidal nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
At the bottom, the flyer asks some pointed final questions, “As a Cornell engineer, you have so many opportunities. Seriously? This?”
Anduril’s AI-based surveillance towers currently provide coverage across approximately 30% of the U.S. southern border for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to the company’s website. The towers have “directly contributed to saving lives and stopping illicit drugs from entering the U.S.” and have “identified and interdicted hundreds of thousands of border crossings,” according to the site.
The talk opened with Associate Dean of Students with Student Support and Advocacy Services Christine Nye restating Cornell’s policies on expressive activity and free speech. She emphasized that invited speakers have the right to present their views without intimidation and to be heard, while audience members who disagree may express their views as long as they do not disrupt the speaker’s ability to speak.
Presenters then moved through a brief six-slide overview of Anduril’s mission, hiring process and internship opportunities. When it became clear the presentation was ending, protesters lifted anti-ICE signs, some shouted obscenities and “shame” at the presenters while others asked why they weren’t able to ask questions they had prepared.
Students spent more than a week urging Cornell Career Services to cancel the talk, according to protest organizers and an Instagram post from Students for Justice in Palestine, Cornell Progressives, Mexican Students Association and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán de Cornell.
Adrianna Vink ’27, president of the Cornell Progressives, helped to organize the protest. She discussed the demonstration in an interview with The Sun.
Vink explained that students had been “calling and emailing Career Services” because they believe Cornell should not host weapons manufacturers they view as complicit in “genocide and human rights abuses against immigrants within our country.”
“The people here today are concerned students who showed up — you saw people made signs, people prepared questions, people were ready to engage with these recruiters and they clearly weren’t ready to engage with us.” Vink added. “I think this is an important lesson for us to learn as students, that when we show up and we make our values clear, we can make our university the place that we want it to be.”
Another protester at the event, Francis Burns ’27, echoed Vink’s points, emphasizing that the protest was meant to enlighten Cornell students who may be less politically aware.
“We’re trying to show engineers that these are unacceptable career paths and let people know that it is socially unacceptable to work for these companies,” Burns said.
There was a visible police presence at the event, with officers stationed outside Phillips Hall and inside the lecture room where the talk was taking place.
This event comes after recent controversy surrounding the University’s advertisement of CBP jobs through virtual Career Services events, as well as on the career development platform Handshake.
Shannon Prior, head of communications at Anduril, wrote in a statement to The Sun that the company viewed the visit as a success and had already received several applications in the hours following the event.
“We even had students emailing our recruiters apologizing for the disturbance,” Prior wrote.
When asked why Anduril chose to proceed with the session despite student opposition, Prior wrote that the company supports free expression. “We respect the right to free speech and we understand that protests are a hallmark of democratic expression,” she wrote.
However, Prior added that the criticism was difficult for the company to understand. She described it as “perplexing” that some would protest a firm that supports the U.S. military, which she said safeguards those same freedoms.
Prior expressed that Anduril remains proud of its work assisting service members and will continue supporting them “even when others stand in opposition.”
When asked what she would say to a Cornell engineer attending this event, Vink argued that student labor plays a pivotal role in the defense industry.
“Your labor is critical to these systems of violence and oppression, and that is the reason why these recruiters are coming here,” she said. “They need you, and if you withhold your labor, we can make the world a much safer and more just place.”
Vivienne Cierski is a freshman in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is a Sun Contributor and can be reached at vsc38@cornell.edu
