The comments, during an on stage interview Monday at a Wired technology conference in San Francisco, followed reports several weeks ago about Google's secret China search project that sparked a backlash from human-rights advocates and Washington lawmakers, who warn the effort could aid a repressive regime. Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., also faces pressure from its own employees to only do work that adheres to the company's values. In August, hundreds of employees signed a letter asking Google to give rank-and-file workers a voice in the ethics-review process and the ability to opt out of working on certain projects. Google decided in 2010 to withdraw its search engine from China to protest government censorship and attempts to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists. Google co-founder Sergey Brin then described the government as having the "earmarks of totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union, where he was born.