The United States military used a version of Elon Musk's Grok artificial intelligence tool — known as the Grok Gov Model — to help select targets during strikes on Iran, marking the first official confirmation of the AI's use in combat operations. The disclosure came in a letter from the Pentagon to a federal court, filed as part of a civil lawsuit brought by the NAACP (a prominent American civil rights organisation) against Musk's AI company xAI, which operates gas turbines without permits in Memphis to power its data centres, disproportionately affecting Black neighbourhoods. The Trump administration is seeking to block the lawsuit on national security grounds, arguing that shutting down the turbines would disrupt AI innovations that "support military operations" — with officials noting the Grok-derived system helped deploy over 2,000 munitions against 2,000 targets in Iran within 96 hours, a scale of targeting that military ethics experts warn could dangerously lower the threshold for escalation.