Hegseth places all bets on Grok, the AI with a troubling record of saying the quiet part out loud
On stage at SpaceX, Defense Secretary “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth announced the Pentagon is all-in on Grok
On stage at SpaceX, Defense Secretary “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth announced the Pentagon is all-in on Grok, Elon Musk’s large language model with a documented history of generating sexualized content involving minors and referring to itself as “Mecha-Hitler.”
Grok is the AI model that has repeatedly generated sexualized content involving minors, veered into antisemitic fantasy, and at one point began referring to itself as “Mecha-Hitler.” These are not edge cases uncovered by hostile actors. They are widely documented failures that xAI has struggled, and often refused, to meaningfully address. Musk’s response has been to suggest using Grok to offend people at parties and to insist that the real problem is people being too sensitive.
This is not leadership. It is outsourcing judgment to a system that cannot reliably distinguish between fiction and fact, irony and intent, or safety and spectacle. Betting national security on an AI company that has yet to demonstrate control over its own product is not a plan. It is a gamble dressed up as inevitability.
The United States does not lead the world by being first to wire unstable tools into its most dangerous institutions. It leads by understanding the difference between power and wisdom. Right now, that distinction appears to be missing from the stage.
Remember that xAI is in part owned by, and not in a trivial manner, Saudi and Qatari investors.
when, or more likely how often, have we been warned against putting a computer at any level in charge of the military? ("yeah but that's all been fiction, up to now, and that isn't printed on the back of a whiskey bottle so hegseth hasn't read it") ...seem to recall the real threat is when the 'master control program' was itself written by computer which was written by computer... aka 'grok' @#$!
This is leadership, just not in an optimal direction.