On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he plans to integrate Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks later this month. During remarks on the SpaceX headquarters in Texas reported by The Guardian, Hegseth said the combination would place “the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.”
The announcement comes weeks after Grok drew international backlash for generating sexualized images of ladies and youngsters, although the Department of Defense has not released official documentation confirming Hegseth’s announced timeline or implementation details.
Through the same appearance, Hegseth rolled out what he called an “AI acceleration strategy” for the Department of Defense. The strategy, he said, will “unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, deal with investments, and display the execution approach needed to make sure we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the long run.”
As a part of the plan, Hegseth directed the DOD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to make use of its full authority to implement department data policies, making information available across all IT systems for AI applications.
“AI is barely pretty much as good as the information that it receives, and we’re going to be certain that that it’s there,” Hegseth said.
If implemented, Grok would join other AI models the Pentagon has adopted in recent months. In July 2025, the defense department issued contracts value as much as $200 million for every of 4 corporations, including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI, for developing AI agent systems across different military operations. In December 2025, the Department of Defense chosen Google’s Gemini as the muse for GenAI.mil, an internal AI platform for military use.
