Grok is best known as the AI chatbot people turn to for racist conspiracy theories, praise of Adolf Hitler, and generating child sexual abuse material. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants you to know it’s also helpful for killing people. Or at least that seemed to be the takeaway when he appeared at SpaceX with Elon Musk.
Hegseth visited Starbase in South Texas on Monday, where he was introduced by Musk, the billionaire oligarch and owner of xAI, the company that makes Grok. Musk praised Hegseth while talking about how his desire was to make science fiction dreams a reality.
“We want to make Star Trek real. 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,” Musk said.
Musk often talks about 20th-century science fiction and utopian ideas for the future, though he frequently seems confused about how they might be realistically achieved.
For example, Musk’s latest fixation has been on the idea of a post-scarcity future where his Optimus robots deliver a life of leisure and abundance. The billionaire has even insisted that money won’t exist in the future. But it’s unclear how humanity could achieve this kind of reality through the deployment of robots alone. Automation technology like humanoid robots can’t deliver a universal basic income, which is something that needs to be enacted through centralized governments, not free market capitalism.
As silly as it was, Hegseth was game for this Star Trek fantasy when he got on stage after Musk’s introduction. “How about this… Star Trek real,” said Hegseth, making the Vulcan salute.
“Last month, I took the first step toward changing how the department does business with frontier AI technologies when we announced the rollout of Gen AI with our partners from Google,” said Hegseth. “And I want to thank the Google team for leaning forward and making the investment to get their Gemini app to about 3 million users in the War Department.”
Hegseth refers to the Defense Department as the “War Department,” a name change that hasn’t been enacted by Congress.
“But today, we’re excited to announce the next frontier AI model company to join GenAI.mil. And that is Grok from xAI, which will go live later this month,” Hegseth continued. The Defense Secretary went on to say that, “very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.”
Hegseth said that enormous amounts of Pentagon data will be fed through these AI models, which President Joe Biden’s administration had resisted because it introduces tremendous risks to data security. But the former Fox News host insists everything will be safe while allowing the military to be more lethal.
“Effective immediately, responsible AI at the War Department means objectively truthful AI capabilities employed securely and within the laws governing the activities of the department. We will not employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars,” Hegseth told the SpaceX employees.
President Trump’s Defense Secretary also whined about “DEI and social justice,” a common punching bag among the far right and code for anything that might represent someone outside of straight white men. And he suggested that Grok was uniquely positioned to provide good data to the Pentagon because it had access to open-source information on Musk’s X social media platform.
Photos released by the White House after the kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro showed a makeshift war room at Mar-a-Lago where X was prominently on display with a search term like “Venezuela.” There was also a tear-eyed emoji on the screen, right behind Hegseth’s head.
“We will judge AI models on this standard alone, factually accurate, mission relevant, without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” said Hegseth. “Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us. We’re building war-ready weapons and systems, not chatbots for an Ivy League faculty lounge.”
The pairing of Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth on stage would be a little unexpected for anyone who’s been in a coma since the summer. Musk had a very public falling out with President Trump in June after spending the previous four months taking a chainsaw to the federal government in the name of DOGE. Trump and Musk have made amends, and they seem to be working on the same team now, with Hegseth making frequent reference to the billionaire’s efforts to dismantle anything deemed “woke” or out of line with the president’s agenda.
“This is about building an innovation pipeline that cuts through the overgrown bureaucratic underbrush and clears away the debris, Elon style, preferably with a chainsaw, and to do so at speed and urgency that meets the moment,” said Hegseth.
“As I’ve said repeatedly to every audience, the President of the United States and I have the backs of our warfighters who have to make split-second life and death decisions on the battlefield. And I want this audience to know that we also have the backs of innovators who share that very same urgency.”
Read the full article here
