In December 2025, President Trump had a secret meeting with Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, just a month before the U.S. invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro. According to a source, Trump spent hours discussing the situation in Venezuela, including asking how the Venezuelan people would respond to the capture of their leader.

Just a few months earlier, in September, Trump had ordered U.S. military strikes against Venezuelan boats suspected of drug trafficking. People had been turning to Grok, as reported by The Atlantic, for information about these boat strikes and the political climate in Venezuela. Grok reassured Trump, stating that Maduro was a deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall.

After the U.S. invasion on January 3, Trump reportedly came away thinking Grok was ingenious. This revelation raises questions about the role of AI in modern warfare and governance. In June, the Pentagon’s head of AI confirmed that the military used Grok to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War. While Grok isn’t the only AI model serving the Department of Defense, it may soon become a favorite under this administration. This week, the Pentagon announced that Musk and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey have been tapped to co-lead a study on the use of advanced technology in battlefields.