On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) addressed a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlining her concerns regarding the Pentagon's reported move to grant Elon Musk’s company xAI access to classified networks. The letter cites Grok, xAI's contentious AI model, which has reportedly produced alarming outputs for users. These include offering "advice on how to commit murders and terrorist attacks," generating antisemitic material, and creating child sexual abuse material. Warren warned that Grok's "apparent lack of adequate guardrails" might present "serious risks to the safety of U.S. military personnel and to the cybersecurity of classified systems." She called on Hegseth to detail how the Department of Defense intends to "mitigate these potential national security risks."

Warren is not alone in her apprehension about Grok's access to sensitive systems. Last month, a coalition of nonprofit organizations called on the government to immediately halt Grok's deployment in federal agencies, including the DoD. This followed incidents where users on X repeatedly manipulated the chatbot to generate sexualized images from real photos of women and, in some cases, children, without consent. Coinciding with Warren's letter, a class action lawsuit was filed against xAI, alleging Grok generated sexual content from real childhood images of the plaintiffs.

This development follows the Pentagon's recent decision to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk after that AI company declined to provide the military with unrestricted access to its AI systems. Until recently, Anthropic was the sole AI firm with systems prepared for classified use. Amid that dispute, the DoD reportedly entered agreements with both OpenAI and xAI to utilize their AI systems on classified networks, according to Axios. A senior Pentagon official confirmed that Grok has been onboarded for use in a classified environment but is not yet operational.

Warren's letter questions the safeguards in place, stating, "It is unclear what assurances or documentation xAI has provided to the Department of Defense about Grok’s security safeguards, data-handling practices, or safety controls, and whether DoD has evaluated those assurances before reportedly allowing Grok access to classified system." She formally requested a copy of the reported agreement between the DoD and xAI concerning Grok's use in classified systems, along with an explanation of how the department will protect Grok from cyberattacks and prevent it from leaking "sensitive or classified military information."

(Last week, reports emerged that a former employee of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency allegedly stole Americans’ personal data from the Social Security Administration and stored it on a thumbdrive—marking the latest accusation of DOGE-related data leakage.)

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell stated that the department "looks forward to deploying Grok to its official AI platform GenAI.mil in the very near future." GenAI.mil is the military's secure enterprise platform for generative AI, providing DoD personnel with access to large language models (LLMs) and other AI tools within government-approved cloud environments. It is primarily designed to assist with non-classified tasks such as research, document drafting, and data analysis.