Pentagon used Elon Musk’s Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran, official says

Pentagon used Elon Musk’s Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran, official says Top defense official says data centers powering trillionaire’s chatbot are critical to national security - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Donald Trump’s administration turned to Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot to launch thousands of missiles in Iran, according to a top defense official. In a sworn statement defending the trillionaire from a lawsuit alleging xAI data centers are illegally polluting Black communities, the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence chief said the chatbot’s continued operation is “a matter of paramount national security” — and was used to fire more than “2,000 munitions at 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours.” Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, is among four AI models “currently capable of supporting national security applications,” according to Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer. The chatbot is also one of three products “equipped to support mission-critical operations” in top secret settings, Stanley wrote. The filing appears to be the first explicit admission from an administration official that the government is using Musk’s AI to bomb Iran, joining several other AI systems that have come under intense scrutiny after U.S.-led attacks killed hundreds of civilians, including children. U.S. military investigators believe American forces were likely responsible for a strike on an Iranian girl’s school in Minab that killed at least 175 people, mostly children, in what analysts and human rights officials believe is the deadliest incident for civilian casualties since the U.S. and Israeli forces began attacking the country in February. Outside analysts have suggested that the Pentagon’s AI-driven targeting — in addition to human error that failed to check whether target maps were up to date — may have played a role in the bombing. The targets for Operation Epic Fury were identified with the aid of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Maven Smart System, which uses AI to lay out data on a dashboard to support officials in their decision-making. Those AI products do not explicitly create targets but work within Maven to identify potential points of interest for military intelligence. In court filings on Monday, the Pentagon said it relies on xAI’s Grok Gov Model, a suite of products designed to work with federal agencies with features “found in no other frontier AI model,” according to Stanley. The Pentagon would be “severely” impacted by a court ruling that prevents xAI from being “deployed, refined and upgraded” across the Pentagon, according to the Department of Justice. The Trump administration is asking a federal judge in Mississippi to toss out a lawsuit brought by the NAACP, which claims Musk’s xAI is violating the Clean Air Act by running dozens of gas-burning turbines despite lacking permits for them. The NAACP alleges that xAI operates at least 57 turbines being used to power its Colossus 2 data center without pollution controls required by the Clean Air Act. That data center and others are “well positioned” to provide a “critical surge” in energy capacity in the event of an “armed conflict or other exigent circumstances” impacting national security, according to Stanley. Data centers powering AI products used by the federal government are a “long-term strategic tool vital to maintaining our technological advantage against adversaries,” he wrote. Several Democrats in Congress are proposing legislation to restrict the military’s use of AI after top officials declined to investigate civilian deaths that may have been prevented by stricter controls on AI. A bill from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would ensure that human commanders would remain in control of making life-and-death decisions and would ban the use of AI entirely when it comes to nuclear weapons, domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons systems. “The most critical decisions affecting our national security and the lives of our service members must always be made by human beings, not unaccountable machines,” she said in a statement earlier this month. “Right now, the Pentagon is moving toward deploying incredibly powerful AI technology without commonsense guardrails in place, which could have catastrophic consequences that make all of us less safe,” she added. “We must act now – not to stifle technological progress, but to establish clear rules of the road that keep humans in charge and keep AI’s use in warfare smart and safe.” While it relies on several AI products to launch missiles at Iran, the Department of Defense is also embroiled in a legal battle over the use of another AI tool used for warfare. AI company Anthropic failed to reach an agreement with the Pentagon after finding that the administration did not guarantee against the use of its model Claude for domestic surveillance or autonomous drones. The Pentagon then designated Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security” that could endanger the company’s future contracts with the government, sparking an ongoing legal battle. The Independent has requested comment from xAI. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments