Time magazine reported that in December 2025 President Donald Trump held a private meeting with Elon Musk and spent hours interacting with Musk’s Grok chatbot. According to the report, this meeting took place roughly a month before U.S. forces invaded Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro.
What Trump asked and Grok’s response
Sources told Time that Trump specifically asked how Venezuelans would react to the capture of their president. Grok reportedly replied that Maduro was a “deeply unpopular dictator” and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. When celebrations did occur after the January 3 invasion, the source said Trump concluded that Grok was “ingenious.”
Background: earlier strikes and public queries to Grok
The meeting occurred about seven months after Musk left his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within the Trump administration. A few months before the December meeting, in September 2025, Trump had ordered U.S. military strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were involved in drug trafficking.
At that time, some reports noted that officials and members of the public were consulting Grok about the boat strikes and the political climate in Venezuela; The Atlantic covered those queries. Time says that context helped shape why the Grok assessment was presented to and considered by Trump.
Military use of Grok and Pentagon comments
The Time article also notes that in June this year the Pentagon’s head of AI said the military had used a government version of Grok (Gov Grok) to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War. The report points out that Grok is not the only AI model the Department of Defense is using: OpenAI has an agreement with the DoD, and Anthropic has been involved in negotiations over how its models may be applied for military intelligence and modern warfare.
Musk and Palmer Luckey tapped to lead Pentagon study
This week the Pentagon announced that Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, will co-lead a study on how advanced technology is and can be used on battlefields.
Why this matters
The details reported by Time are significant because they illustrate that political leaders may rely on AI-generated assessments when considering major policy and military actions. They also raise questions about the ethical, legal and transparency issues surrounding the use of commercial AI systems in government and military decision-making.
(This article summarizes claims made in Time and other public reports; the information presented here reflects those published accounts.)
