Pentagon now armed with Musk’s xAI and Grok: what could go wrong?
The US Department of War has announced that it’s partnering with Elon Musk’s AI ecosystem to deploy Grok across its government systems. The choice is interesting, to say the least, because Grok is notoriously weird and unethical.
According to the Pentagon, the “frontier‑grade” capabilities of xAI’s Grok family of models will be integrated into the department’s recently launched AI platform, GenAI.mil.
Coming as soon as early 2026, the partnership will allow the Department’s three million military and civilian personnel to safely access more advanced AI tools for everyday tasks, including handling sensitive government information, the release reads.
The partnership is “part of our longstanding support of the United States Government and xAI’s mission to bring the best tools and technologies available in industry to benefit our nation,” xAI said in a statement.
“AI tools present boundless opportunities to increase efficiency, and we are thrilled to witness AI's future positive impact across the War Department,” Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, also boasted.
To be fair, Hegseth’s quote is from an earlier press release where the DoW announced the launch of Google Cloud's Gemini for Government on GenAI.mil.
And in July, the Pentagon announced that its Chief Digital and AI Office partnered with xAI, Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI through four separate $200 million agreements. This is important because trusting xAI alone really wouldn’t be a smart move.
First, the collaboration is not the first chapter in Musk’s long-running and famously chaotic relationship with government initiatives.
His infamous “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) swept over the US federal government like a tornado at the beginning of 2025. Tens of thousands of government workers were laid off before DOGE encountered massive legal pushback and was dismantled.
Second, why should any organization, let alone the Pentagon, trust Grok? The controversial large language model has, in the past, praised Adolf Hitler, said Musk was more attractive than Brad Pitt, claimed Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election (he really didn’t), and, more generally, spouts far-right-wing talking points.
That’s probably because Grok is mostly trained on data from the X platform, which has turned into a safe haven for radical fundamentalists of all kinds, including the MAGA fanatics.
That’s also why it’s a bit concerning to read in the DoW press release that “users will also gain access to real‑time global insights from the X platform, providing War Department personnel with a decisive information advantage.”
Is it really going to be so advantageous to rely on live data from X, where misinformation simply thrives these days?
The Trump administration officials are regularly boasting of achievements that simply aren’t there, and plans that will never come into fruition.
Already in September, Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senator, called the Pentagon's upcoming deal with xAi “uniquely troubling,” adding that Grok was known to provide inaccurate information when asked about historical events and natural disasters, including wrong names, dates, and details of events.
On the other hand, the Trump administration officials are regularly boasting of achievements that simply aren’t there, and plans that will never come into fruition. Just read this quote from Hegseth: “We are pushing all of our chips in on artificial intelligence as a fighting force.” Wow.
The Futurism is probably in concluding that it’s currently hard to picture Grok as a crucial link in the Pentagon systems.
“This feels more like the Defense Department issuing a press release about a new supplier of toner, with a bit of Dot-Com Bubble flavor thrown in,” said the respected tech news outlet.
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