According to a Time magazine report, Donald Trump spent hours chatting with Elon Musk’s Grok AI in December 2025. In that secret meeting, he asked how Venezuelans might react if their president were captured. Grok replied that Nicolás Maduro was “deeply unpopular” and that many Venezuelans would celebrate his downfall. A few weeks later, the U.S. invaded Venezuela and took Maduro into custody on Jan 3 2026. After the celebrations that followed, Trump reportedly told a source that Grok was “ingenious.”
How Grok is being used by the Pentagon
The same report notes that the Pentagon’s head of AI said the military used Grok to help deploy and strike targets during the Iran War earlier in 2026. Grok is not the only AI model the Defense Department works with; OpenAI and Anthropic also have contracts. In early June 2026, the Pentagon announced that Musk and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey will co‑lead a study on advanced battlefield technology.
Why it matters
For ordinary citizens, the story shows that a commercial chatbot can influence high‑level political decisions and even military operations. It raises questions about how much trust leaders should place in AI advice, especially when the AI’s answers are not transparent. The extent of Grok’s role in the Venezuela operation remains unclear, leaving uncertainty about oversight of such tools.
