According to a Time report cited by TechCrunch, President Trump met secretly with Elon Musk in December 2025, about seven months after Musk left his DOGE role. During that meeting, Trump reportedly spent hours with Musk's Grok chatbot, asking how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Grok told him that Maduro was a deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall.
The U.S. invaded Venezuela on January 3, and celebrations followed. Trump reportedly came away impressed with Grok. The episode appears to have strengthened the chatbot's position in military circles: in June, the Pentagon's head of AI said the military used Gov Grok to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War.
Grok is not the only AI model working with the Defense Department—OpenAI also has an agreement, and Anthropic has been negotiating how its models can be used. But this week the Pentagon announced that Musk and Anduril's Palmer Luckey will co-lead a study on advanced technology in battlefields, signaling Musk's continued influence over military AI procurement.