Elon Musk's AI technology will now be used in the Pentagon

Grok’s arrival inside military networks raises red flags about security, judgment, and power.

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A Pentagon AI experiment gone wrong

There is a particular kind of Trump-era spectacle that always seems to return eventually: the reunion tour.

This week, we got one of the more unsettling versions of it. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Secretary of Defense, publicly reunited with Elon Musk in what can only be described as a renewed political love affair. And along with it came an announcement that should alarm anyone who cares about basic competence, security, or governance.

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, is being brought into the Pentagon.

Yes, that Grok.

Before we even get to the politics of it, or the culture war framing, we should pause and ask the simplest possible question: does this sound like a good idea to anyone?

Forget ideology for a moment or whether you like or dislike Elon Musk. Do we want an AI system run by a company Musk staffs with inexperienced loyalists, and overseen by Musk himself, embedded inside sensitive Pentagon networks?

That question alone should stop the conversation. But instead, it became wrapped in the usual Trump-world performance.

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Grok inside the Pentagon

Hegseth used the moment to once again lean into his favorite culture war script.

He announced that the Pentagon is “reviving the warrior ethos” with the Grok technology. That means, according to him, eliminating “distractions and debris.” No DEI. No “dudes in dresses.” No climate change. No social justice. No political correctness.

This rhetoric is not new. It’s been floating around conservative media spaces for years. What is striking is how disconnected it is from the actual lives of the people these officials claim to represent.

And Hegseth used this culture war moment to transition into one of the most alarming announcements we’ve heard recently: that Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Musk’s xAI and integrated into X, will soon be operating inside Pentagon networks. This includes operating within unclassified and classified systems.

This was presented as a major advancement. The Pentagon, we were told, will judge AI models on one standard alone: whether they allow the U.S. to “fight wars.” No ideological constraints needed.

Hegseth even reassured us that the Department of Defense “will not be woke.” It will work. It will not generate images of “dudes in dresses.” It will build war-ready systems, not ‘chatbots for an Ivy League faculty lounge.’

Grok is not some pristine, carefully governed military-grade system. One of the things Grok has become notorious for is generating non-consensual, sexually explicit AI images of real people. That is a documented behavior of the model, which has faced multiple lawsuits concerning trade secrets, intellectual property, and content liability.

And now we are told this is exactly what belongs inside the Pentagon.

Even Fox News has reported on Grok’s irresponsible use of photo generation in regards to safety.

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Elon Musk’s tall tales

Musk explained his vision. He wants to make Star Trek real, wants Starfleet Academy to become science fact rather than science fiction. He wants epic spaceships, traveling beyond our star system, maybe meeting aliens, maybe discovering long-dead alien civilizations.

Nobody said that space exploration itself is the problem. It can advance technology. It expands human knowledge. It can inspire generations.

That is not the issue.

The issue is this combination.

Elon Musk is deeply embedded in the Trump administration. He was supposedly tasked with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. Despite loud claims, no major fraud cases have materialized and no meaningful accountability has followed.

And now, after failing at that assignment, he is welcomed back as a hero. Given influence over military technology and handed access to the Pentagon’s AI infrastructure. He is allowed to pontificate about Starfleet while real people struggle to pay their bills.

None of this has even mentioned Musk’s deeply unsettling tweets supporting white supremacy and using anti semitic language. Elon sent these out only days before Hegseth’s announcement that Grok would be integrated into Pentagon systems.

This alone should make you deeply uncomfortable.

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The big concern

Skepticism here has nothing to do with hating technology or opposing space exploration.

It has everything to do with concentrating power in a single billionaire who is simultaneously:

• A political extremist

• Thin-skinned and impulsive

• Involved in multiple government functions

• Given access to sensitive military systems

• Surrounded by loyalists rather than independent oversight

That is not a healthy setup for a democracy. It is not a recipe for good governance. And it is certainly not how you responsibly integrate AI into national defense.

The judgment on display here is deeply questionable.

We’ll see where this goes. But the idea that Elon Musk’s chatbot belongs inside the Pentagon should set off alarms across the political spectrum.

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