{"id":76075,"date":"2026-06-16T20:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/76075\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T20:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:22:09","slug":"pentagon-used-elon-musks-grok-ai-to-fire-2000-missiles-at-iran-official-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/76075\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon used Elon Musk\u2019s Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran, official says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s administration turned to Elon Musk\u2019s Grok chatbot<\/a> to launch thousands of missiles in Iran<\/a>, according to a top defense official.<\/p>\n

In a sworn statement<\/a> defending the trillionaire from a lawsuit alleging xAI data centers are illegally polluting Black communities<\/a>, the Pentagon\u2019s artificial intelligence chief said the chatbot\u2019s continued operation is \u201ca matter of paramount national security\u201d \u2014 and was used to fire more than \u201c2,000 munitions at 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, is among four AI models \u201ccurrently capable of supporting national security applications,\u201d according to Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon\u2019s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer.<\/p>\n

The chatbot is also one of three products \u201cequipped to support mission-critical operations\u201d in top secret settings, Stanley wrote.<\/p>\n

The filing appears to be the first explicit admission from an administration official that the government is using Musk\u2019s AI to bomb Iran, joining several other AI systems that have come under intense scrutiny<\/a> after U.S.-led attacks killed hundreds of civilians, including children.<\/p>\n

\"xAI\u2019s<\/p>\n

xAI\u2019s Grok chatbot has been used to fire more than 2,000 munitions in Iran, according to a top Pentagon official (Reuters)<\/p>\n

U.S. military investigators believe American forces were likely responsible<\/a> for a strike on an Iranian girl\u2019s school in Minab that killed at least 175 people, mostly children, in what analysts and human rights officials believe is the deadliest incident for civilian casualties since the U.S. and Israeli forces began attacking the country in February.<\/p>\n

Outside analysts have suggested that the Pentagon\u2019s AI-driven targeting<\/a> \u2014 in addition to human error that failed to check whether target maps were up to date \u2014 may have played a role in the bombing.<\/a><\/p>\n

The targets for Operation Epic Fury were identified with the aid of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency\u2019s Maven Smart System, which uses AI to lay out data on a dashboard to support officials in their decision-making.<\/p>\n

Those AI products do not explicitly create targets but work within Maven to identify potential points of interest for military intelligence.<\/a><\/p>\n

In court filings on Monday, the Pentagon said it relies on xAI\u2019s Grok Gov Model, a suite of products designed to work with federal agencies with features \u201cfound in no other frontier AI model,\u201d according to Stanley.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon would be \u201cseverely\u201d impacted by a court ruling that prevents xAI from being \u201cdeployed, refined and upgraded\u201d across the Pentagon, according to the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s use of AI has come under intense scrutiny after members of Congress and outside military analysts questioned whether faulty intelligence led to strikes that killed hundreds of civilians, including children (Reuters)<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is asking a federal judge in Mississippi to toss out a lawsuit brought by the NAACP, which claims Musk\u2019s xAI is violating the Clean Air Act by running dozens of gas-burning turbines despite lacking permits for them.<\/p>\n

The NAACP alleges that xAI operates at least 57 turbines being used to power its Colossus 2 data center without pollution controls required by the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n

That data center and others are \u201cwell positioned\u201d to provide a \u201ccritical surge\u201d in energy capacity in the event of an \u201carmed conflict or other exigent circumstances\u201d impacting national security, according to Stanley.<\/p>\n

Data centers powering AI products used by the federal government are a \u201clong-term strategic tool vital to maintaining our technological advantage against adversaries,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Several Democrats in Congress are proposing legislation to restrict the military\u2019s use of AI after top officials declined to investigate civilian deaths that may have been prevented by stricter controls on AI.<\/a><\/p>\n

A bill from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would ensure that human commanders would remain in control of making life-and-death decisions and would ban the use of AI entirely when it comes to nuclear weapons, domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most critical decisions affecting our national security and the lives of our service members must always be made by human beings, not unaccountable machines,\u201d she said in a statement earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the Pentagon is moving toward deploying incredibly powerful AI technology without commonsense guardrails in place, which could have catastrophic consequences that make all of us less safe,\u201d she added. \u201cWe must act now \u2013 not to stifle technological progress, but to establish clear rules of the road that keep humans in charge and keep AI\u2019s use in warfare smart and safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it relies on several AI products to launch missiles at Iran, the Department of Defense is also embroiled in a legal battle over the use of another AI tool used for warfare.<\/p>\n

AI company Anthropic failed to reach an agreement with the Pentagon<\/a> after finding that the administration did not guarantee against the use of its model Claude for domestic surveillance or autonomous drones.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon then designated Anthropic a \u201csupply-chain risk to national security\u201d that could endanger the company\u2019s future contracts with the government, sparking an ongoing legal battle.<\/p>\n

The Independent has requested comment from xAI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s administration turned to Elon Musk\u2019s Grok chatbot to launch thousands of missiles in Iran, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[15722,25,20313,39,6364,7856,369,1896,14354,2899],"class_list":["post-76075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-xai","tag-administration-official","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cameron-stanley","tag-data-centers","tag-grok","tag-grok-chatbot","tag-iran","tag-national-security","tag-the-pentagon","tag-xai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}