In the early days of the US and Israeli war on Iran, situation monitors were abuzz at the revelation that the Pentagon had used top large language models to identify targets for annihilation via air strikes.

Those targets included civilian buildings like Tehran’s Azadi Sport Complex, a historic stadium which once hosted World Cup matches, and the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school, in a bombing that killed at least 156 people, including over 100 children.

All eyes were on Anthropic at that time, as news broke that US military personnel had used its AI model, Claude, in the selection of certain targets to bomb in Iran. (When pressed by Futurism, military officials refused to say whether Claude played a role in the bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh, specifically.)

Now, it’s clear that Claude has a partner in crime: Elon Musk’s proprietary chatbot, Grok.

In a sworn declaration defending the newly-minted trillionaire from a Clean Air lawsuit, the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence chief Cameron Stanley let slip that Grok was used to fire over “2,000 munitions at 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours.”

According to the Independent, which broke the story, it’s the first time a Trump administration official has confirmed the use of Grok in the bombing of Iran, where the US and its allies have killed at least 3,468 people. In his statement, Stanley made note of the fact that Grok is one of four AI models “currently capable of supporting national security applications,” calling Musk’s chatbot a “matter of paramount national security.”

The context in which this information came to light is extraordinary. Stanley’s statement came amidst a major lawsuit by the NAACP against Grok’s parent company, xAI, for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act.

Last year, it was widely reported that xAI was deploying dozens of portable combustion turbines to power its data centers, flooding the largely Black and working class communities nearby with noxious fumes. The Trump administration is now pulling out all the stops to defend Musk’s right to keep pumping out that poison, with the Department of Justice — and now the Pentagon — pressuring the federal judge in charge to dismiss the trial, which would be an unprecedented infringement on the Clean Air act.

Taken together, there’s perhaps no greater illustration that for the United States, the war effort requires two fronts: one on foreign soil, and one at home.

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