A senior U.S. defense official has claimed that the Pentagon used Elon Musk's Grok chatbot to help launch 2,000 missiles at Iran, according to reporting from The Independent, AOL and MSN.
The assertion appears in a sworn statement, described by several outlets as a legal briefing, in which the official defended Musk. According to AOL, the Trump administration "turned to" Grok to launch thousands of missiles in Iran. The reports say the official also argued that the data centers powering the billionaire's AI chatbot are critical to U.S. national security.
The Philippine broadcaster ANC 24/7, cited via Google News, similarly reported that the U.S. government revealed Grok's role in the strikes through a legal filing.
The available source items are short and overlapping, and they do not specify when the strikes took place, what role the AI actually played in targeting or firing decisions, or the full context of the legal case in which the statement was made. The reports consistently frame the disclosure as coming from a top defense official rather than from Musk or his companies directly.
Why it matters: if accurate, the claim would mark a striking public acknowledgment that a commercial AI chatbot was tied to live military strikes — raising urgent questions about accountability, civilian oversight, and how far automated tools should reach into life-and-death decisions of war.