Pentagon Official Confirms Elon Musk’s AI Tool Grok used in Launching more than ‘2,000 Munitions’ at Iran
A Pentagon official disclosed in a court filing earlier this week that the U.S. military a version of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence tool, Grok, to assist in carrying out attacks on Iran.
Cameron Stanley the Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer, stated in a sworn declaration to a federal court in Mississippi that the military "relies on derivatives of [Musk-run xAI's] commercial offerings known as the Grok Gov Model."
According to Stanley, the model is used within the Pentagon's Maven Smart System and "enabled US forces to deploy more than 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury" — the name the Trump administration gave to the military campaign it launched against Iran in late February.
Stanley's statement came as part of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP against xAI earlier this year. The civil rights organization accused Musk's company of illegally operating dozens of polluting gas turbines for its Colossus 2 data center, which powers Grok.
In his defense of xAI, Stanley argued that if Grok "cannot be deployed, refined, and upgraded" across the Pentagon "due to either limitations in energy supply or limited reserve compute capability, such as those requested by plaintiffs in this matter, the many tools deployed by military and civilian personnel alike which rely on Grok Gov Models would be severely impacted."
Shortly after launching its attack on Iran, the Department of War acknowledged that the U.S. military was "leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools" to help "sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our they can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react."
On March 12, a group of more than 120 House Democrats sent a letter to Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding details on "the role of artificial intelligence... in selecting targets, assessing intelligence, and making legal determinations during Operation Epic Fury."
The lawmakers specifically asked whether AI tools were used to identify an Iranian elementary school as a target. On the first day of the conflict, the U.S. military bombed a girls' school in southern Iran, killing more than 160 people — mostly young children.
