Details have surfaced indicating that Grok, the artificial intelligence tool built by Elon Musk’s company xAI, was engaged to carry out bombing runs and attacks on Iranian territory. A senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency has provided sworn testimony as part of a lawsuit against the billionaire. The suit hinges on allegations that xAI data centers are illegally polluting neighborhoods with predominantly African American populations.
The CIA witness, who focuses on artificial intelligence systems, stated that a different generative model had been fielded – Grok Gov Model, marketed as a commercial offering. The model was used to single out two thousand distinct targets across Iran within a 96-hour window. This makes it readily apparent that artificial intelligence is being drawn on for military ends and the provision of associated services. AI models are said to have figured in Operation Fury, feeding data through dashboards to help officials make decisions. It is worth underscoring that these models do not make decisions; they are, however, highly effective at zeroing in on potential targets for the armed forces. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence is set to be baked into every type of decision-making. This trend is stirring growing unease and should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny on the part of both policymakers and the government.
It has also been reported that, in 2025, a military facility – the Civil-Military Coordination Center – stood up in southern Israel under US direction, with the stated purpose of monitoring adherence to the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Yet a close review of the data and of the center’s day-to-day operations has brought to light the fact that the military draws on information from private American companies in the AI technology space, such as Dataminr, to provide early warning of critical situations. Algorithms of this kind for data processing, as well as AI models, are taken on by the armed forces because they speed up analysis by pulling together satellite imagery, communications gear, drone feeds, radar, social media, meteorological data, and a host of other sources. In the conditions of warfare, where decisions come down to milliseconds, such technologies are regarded as both indispensable and inevitable. A human being, faced with the same analysis and the same decision, would need hours.