“Department of War AI will not be woke”: Pentagon moves forward with Grok military integration despite global backlash
The U.S. military is moving ahead with plans to integrate Grok, the controversial chatbot created by Elon Musk’s xAI, into Pentagon networks.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that Grok will be included on the Department of Defense’s new internal AI platform, GenAI.mil, alongside tools like Google’s Gemini, despite the chatbot facing international bans, regulatory scrutiny, and repeated controversies over racism, antisemitism, and nonconsensual image generation.
Grok joined the Pentagon’s expanding AI push
During the event, Hegseth framed the move as inevitable.
"Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department," he said. "AI is only as good as the data that it receives, and we’re going to make sure that it’s there."
This also means that the AI chatbot could potentially have access to vast amounts of military data.
Elon Musk introduced Hegseth and opened with lofty remarks about SpaceX. "We want to make Star Trek real," Musk said.
"We want to make Starfleet Academy real. So that it’s not always science fiction, but one day, the science fiction turns to science fact." Then, after Hegseth joined him onstage, the secretary flashed a Vulcan salute and said, "How about this? Star Trek real."
Meanwhile, details about GenAI.mil remained thin. The Pentagon first announced the platform in December, after the White House approved contracts of up to $200 million for several AI companies, including xAI. At the time, Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized Grok’s inclusion and called it “uniquely troubling.”
Other countries pulled back as the Pentagon leaned in
While the Pentagon embraced Grok, other governments moved in the opposite direction. In recent weeks, Grok has been under fire for enabling users to request nude photos of others without consent.
Elon Musk's response to the scandal was to restrict access to paid users only, rather than disabling it. In July 2025, the chatbot also went on antisemitic and racist tirades and declared itself "MechaHitler" after an update that Musk claimed had "improved Grok significantly."
Due to the chatbot's recent sexualizing behavior, both Malaysia and Indonesia blocked access to Grok over the weekend. In the U.K., media regulator Ofcom opened an investigation into X over Grok’s image manipulation of women and children, which could lead to fines of "10% of a company’s worldwide qualifying revenue," according toThe Guardian.
The U.K.'s Online Safety Act enables Ofcom to block access to websites that refuse to comply with U.K. law. U.K. government officials said they could back the regulator if it decided to go that route.
Hegseth dismissed cultural concerns and said the "Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us."
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