Grok AI Used to Select 2,000 Targets in Iran Strikes, Pentagon Says

Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool was used to identify targets for strikes against Iran, the Pentagon disclosed Tuesday. The system directed more than 2,000 munitions against 2,000 distinct sites within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury. Cameron Stanley, the Defense Department’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, said Grok is one of four AI models currently capable of supporting national-security applications and one of three equipped to sustain mission-critical operations on top-secret networks.

U.S. government specifications, to provide critical support for targeting, intelligence, readiness and recruitment. The Justice Department made the statements in a legal filing opposing an NAACP lawsuit that accuses xAI of operating dozens of unpermitted gas-fired turbines in violation of the Clean Air Act.

” xAI stated that the turbines are temporary and mobile and are exempt from air permits for up to one year under state rules. Stanley wrote that preserving the data center’s operational capacity is “a matter of paramount national security” and that hindering xAI from improving Grok would impair the Defense Department’s ability to meet its national-security mission.

U.S. Military strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, that killed roughly 150 people, most of them children. Satellite imagery analyzed by Amnesty International showed the facility had been converted to a school long before the strike.

U.S. Central Command who relied on obsolete data from the Defense Intelligence Agency that continued to list the site as an active military facility.