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By Jay Greene 

Microsoft Corp.'s top executives defended supplying technology to the U.S. military, the second time in months the company has explained its relationship with the government in the face of objections from employees.

Brad Smith, president and legal chief, said Microsoft's bid on a massive Defense Department contract known as JEDI -- a project Alphabet Inc.'s Google recently walked away from -- is the kind of work the company is committed to pursuing, even though employees might hold differing views. Mr. Smith and Chief Executive Satya Nadella addressed the issue with employees Thursday.

A debate over providing the U.S. military and law enforcement with powerful technology that can invade privacy or guide lethal weapons has roiled Silicon Valley. Workers at several large technology companies have sought to pressure their employers to cease working on projects, including those involving the use of facial recognition and other forms of artificial intelligence.

"We want the people of this country and especially the people who serve this country to know that we at Microsoft have their back," Mr. Smith wrote in a blog post set for Friday. "They will have access to the best technology that we create."

The remarks come on the heels of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also defending his company's bid for the same $10 billion Defense Department cloud contract, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project.

"One of the jobs of the senior leadership team is to make the right decision even when it's unpopular," Mr. Bezos said at a Wired magazine conference earlier this month. "If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the U.S. Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble. I like this country."

Microsoft, the No. 2 provider of cloud-infrastructure technology behind Amazon Web Services, is among a handful of companies fiercely lobbying for what amounts to one of the biggest government contracts ever for cloud computing. Companies had to submit bids earlier this month.

Withdrawing from JEDI would "reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way," Mr. Smith wrote. "We are not going to withdraw from the future. In the most positive way possible, we are going to work to help shape it."

Google, the third largest cloud-infrastructure provider, opted not to submit a bid, in part because "we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," the company said earlier this month.

The JEDI kerfuffle is the latest example of tech workers pushing back. In June. Microsoft employees unsuccessfully sought to end the company's work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the agency's role in separating children from their parents. The company said it hasn't worked with the agency on any projects related to separating children from their families but continues to support and sell it email and calendaring programs.

That same month, Google decided not to renew a Defense Department contract in which it supplied imaging tools used by drones. A few weeks earlier, some Amazon workers raised concerns over the company's decision to sell facial-recognition tech to help law enforcement identify criminal suspects in surveillance footage.

--Douglas MacMillan contributed to this article.

Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2018 15:14 ET (19:14 GMT)

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