Elon Musk's Grok AI Used in Strikes Against Iran

The U.S. government has confirmed that Elon Musk's artificial intelligence tool, called Grok, was used in military strikes against Iran. This information came out on June 16, when a legal document was shared with the news agency AFP. The document showed that Grok helped the military pick targets during a real operation. This was a major moment, because it is one of the first times the government publicly admitted using a private company's AI in a war.

The legal document was actually written to defend Musk's AI company, called xAI. A civil rights group called the NAACP had sued xAI because it was running large gas-powered generators near a huge data center. The NAACP said those generators were polluting the air in nearby neighborhoods where most residents are Black. The lawsuit asked the court to shut off the power to those generators.

The U.S. Department of Justice stepped in to defend xAI. It argued that shutting down the generators would hurt the country's national security, economy, and energy supply. The government said the generators power AI systems that support military operations. That argument was meant to convince the court to let xAI keep running its equipment.

To back up that claim, the government included a sworn statement from Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's top AI official. Stanley said that Grok is being used inside a program called Project Maven. Project Maven uses AI to help the military find and hit targets. Stanley said that during one mission called 'Operation Epic Fury,' the system helped U.S. forces fire more than 2,000 weapons at 2,000 different targets in just 96 hours.

Before Grok, Project Maven used an AI model called Claude, made by a company called Anthropic. But at the end of February, the government ended its deal with Anthropic. That happened after Anthropic refused to allow its AI to be used for fully automated strikes — meaning attacks run entirely by computers with no human deciding. The government also wanted to use Anthropic's AI to watch large groups of Americans, which Anthropic also refused.

After cutting ties with Anthropic, the Pentagon looked for new AI partners. It turned to companies like Google, OpenAI, and Musk's xAI. However, not everyone at those companies was happy about it. At Google, more than 600 workers signed a letter asking the company not to provide AI for secret military work. Many people have raised concerns about the risks of letting AI make decisions in warfare.

The switch to new AI tools did not happen overnight. In March, the government had to admit that Claude was still being used in the Iran conflict, even after the contract ended. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who is a close ally of President Donald Trump, made another big business move. In February, he merged xAI with his rocket company SpaceX. Then, on June 12, SpaceX completed the largest initial public offering, or IPO, in history — meaning it sold shares to the public and raised a record amount of money.