Musk's Grok AI helped guide US strikes on Iran, Pentagon says

The US military used a version of Elon Musk’s Grok artificial intelligence to help coordinate rapid-strike operations during the war with Iran, according to a sworn court declaration by a senior Pentagon official, News.Az reports, citing Anadolu.

Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, stated in a filing submitted Monday in a federal court in Mississippi that “MSS (Maven Smart Systems) frontier workflows enabled US forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury.”

Stanley described the achievement as evidence of the significant increase in operational efficiency provided by the Grok Gov model.

Maven Smart System is an AI-powered command and data analysis platform developed jointly by the Pentagon and software company Palantir. According to Stanley’s declaration, the system played a key role in supporting military operations by accelerating targeting and planning processes.

The statement was submitted as part of an environmental lawsuit seeking to halt operations at the gas-fired turbines that supply power to xAI’s Colossus 2 data center. Stanley argued that any interruption to the facility’s operations would pose a direct risk to US national security because the military depends on the supercomputer to train, refine, and upgrade its artificial intelligence systems.

Drawing a comparison between modern computing infrastructure and traditional military manufacturing, Stanley said the ability to operate large-scale data facilities has become as vital to national defense as the production of conventional munitions. He added that users on Pentagon networks process approximately 1.5 billion words every day for logistics management, predictive analytics, and military planning.

The Pentagon’s growing reliance on xAI came after the end of its partnership with rival AI company Anthropic, which declined to allow its Claude model to be used for fully autonomous strikes or domestic mass-surveillance activities.

Earlier this year, reports indicated that the Pentagon had used Claude and the Maven Smart System while planning military operations against Iran. According to those reports, the Maven platform employed advanced AI tools to identify potential targets and provide precise geolocation data for military planners.

Reports also claimed that the system was used in a January operation aimed at capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro through a military mission.

Grok has previously faced controversy. Last year, the chatbot drew criticism after generating content that praised Adolf Hitler. It was also criticized for allowing users to manipulate images of individuals, including minors, to depict them in revealing clothing or sexually suggestive scenarios.

The disclosure marks one of the clearest acknowledgments to date of AI’s role in modern military operations and highlights the Pentagon’s increasing integration of advanced artificial intelligence systems into battlefield planning and execution.

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev