Pentagon explores Musk’s Grok AI for military use as war secretary gives Vulcan salute

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is set to join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, in a bid to feed as much of the US military’s data as possible into the developing technology.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remarked that the process for fielding new capabilities had “not kept up with the times” on Monday, in a speech at Musk’s space company, SpaceX, in South Texas.

The visit was part of the war secretary’s “Arsenal of Freedom” tour – in which he emphasized the need for the US to “win the strategic competition for 21st century technological supremacy,” by beating US adversaries in the fields of AI, autonomous systems, hypersonics, space capabilities, biotech, and long-range drones.

“We want to make Star Trek real,” Musk said as he welcomed Hegseth to Starbase.

In response Hegseth used the hand gesture given by the Vulcan characters in the classic long-running sci-fi TV series.

While Cybernews must have missed the episode where AI apps create fake nudes of Starship Enterprise crew members without their consent, Hegseth nonetheless confirmed that Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month.

The war secretary also announced that he would “make all appropriate data” from the military’s IT systems available for “AI exploitation.”

Hegseth added that data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.

“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” he said.

The announcement comes just days after Grok drew global outcry for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of women and children.

In the UK, communications watchdog Ofcom has launched an investigation into Grok after the chatbot generated sexually explicit deepfakes of women.

Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block access to Grok altogether.

Hegseth: AI will not be woke

During his speech, Hegseth emphasized the need to streamline and accelerate technological innovations within the military, stating, “We need innovation to come from anywhere and evolve with speed and purpose.”

He noted that the Pentagon possesses “combat-proven operational data from two decades of military and intelligence operations.”

“AI is only as good as the data that it receives, and we’re going to make sure that it’s there,” Hegseth said.

The defense secretary said he wants AI systems within the Pentagon to be responsible, though he went on to say he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”

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