Boston Dynamics Says the Robot Dogs Are for Tunnels. The Paperwork Says 'Firearms and Tactical.'

Boston Dynamics keeps telling everybody the four Spot robots ICE is buying are for Homeland Security Investigations, the part of ICE that chases cartels and traffickers, not the part that does deportations. That's what the Waltham company told WBUR and Boston.com. About 300 of its own employees signed a petition asking it to cancel the deal anyway, and the company said no.

So I went and looked at the actual federal record. It's public, on USAspending.gov. The award is $1,304,296, signed Sept. 25, and it went to Radeco Inc. in Plainfield, Connecticut, a reseller, not Boston Dynamics directly. The description says the purchase is for "Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs." Not HSI. Not border tunnels. Firearms and tactical.

It also says the deal was "not competed," bought from "only one source," with one offer received. Delivery window ends Nov. 24. That's a month from now.

To be fair, a line on a spending database doesn't tell you how a robot gets used. A tactical training office could support anybody in the agency. But when your own workers are worried, and your answer is "trust us, it's HSI," the paperwork ought to say HSI. Boston Dynamics also says its terms ban weaponizing the robot. Good. Who checks that once it's in a reseller's box headed to a firearms office?

What we still don't know: what ICE's firearms and tactical office plans to do with four robot dogs, why this was a sole-source buy, and how Boston Dynamics would ever find out if its rules were broken.