After DOJ, Pentagon’s AI chief sides with Elon Musk's xAI in datacenter pollution case

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Recently Department of Justice (DoJ) moved to block an NAACP lawsuit challenging Elon Musk' AI company xAI over allegations that gas turbines powering its Mississippi data center risk polluting nearby communities.

The lawsuit filed by the civil-rights group said that xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech are violating the Clean Air Act by operating gas turbines without an air permit at the data center in Southaven, Miss.Now to support the argument, federal prosecutors presented testimony from Pentagon AI chief Cameron Stanley in which he states, under oath, that Grok is already in use within Project Maven, the US military's AI-assisted targeting program that was initially powered by Anthropic's Claude model.

In a sworn statement defending Elon Musk from the lawsuit, Pentagon’s artificial intelligence chief said the chatbot’s continued operation is “a matter of paramount national security” — and was used to fire more than “2,000 munitions at 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours.

”Grok is among four AI models “currently capable of supporting national security applications,” according to Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer.

The chatbot is also one of three products “equipped to support mission-critical operations” in top secret settings, Stanley wrote.The filing appears to be the first explicit admission from a Trump administration official that the government is using Musk’s AI against Iran, joining several other AI systems that have come under intense scrutiny after U.S.-led attacks killed hundreds of civilians, including children.

Declaration of Pentagon AI chief Cameron Stanley in support of Elon Musk's xAI

Here's the sworn court declaration from Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's chief digital and artificial intelligence officer — filed in a Mississippi environmental lawsuit:1. I am the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAO) for the U.S.Department of War (DoW). I have held this position since January 7, 2026. I am responsible for leading the acceleration of Do W's adoption of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AL) to generate decision advantage for the Warfighter.

As such, I oversee the Department-wide integration of digital capabilities and shifting the organization to rapid, disciplined operational delivery. Prior to this role, I served as National Security Transformation Lead for Amazon Web Services; Chief Data Officer of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security; as well as Chief of the Department's Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team, also known as "Project Maven.

"2. I submit this declaration in support of the United States' motion to intervene in thiscivil action. Its purpose is to explain DoW's and the United States' cognizable interests relating to the subiect matter of this case, along with how its disposition will likely harm those interests, especially if intervention is denied. The statements that follow are based on my personal knowledge, as well as information provided to me in the course of my official duties.3. The plaintiffs in this civil action seek to enjoin Al's use of temporary gas-fired turbines at its Stanton Road site that powers the nearby "Colossus 2" data center or supercomputer-xAl uses the Colossus 2 supercomputer to train and upgrade its Grok models, including ones used by DoW. For the reasons described below, this action directly threatens our ongoing national security interests.4. ×AI's Grok represents one of only four proprietary state-of-the-art ("frontier") AI models currently capable of supporting national security applications.Furthermore, xAI remains one of just three enterprise providers equipped to sustain mission-critical operations across Secret and Top-Secret classified networks for the foreseeable future due to the enormous resources required for initial certification.5. DoW currently relies on derivatives of ×AI's commercial offerings known as the Grok Gov Model. This model is tuned specifically for United States government specifications and provides critical support to both business enterprise activities and military operations.

For example, it is deployed in Maven Smart Systems ("MSS") to support vital national security missions, including targeting, intelligence, readiness, and recruitment.

Furthermore, it has tailored functionality to support military planning workflows, report synthesis and generation, predictive analytics for logistics and sustainment, red-teaming analysis of adversary positioning, personnel management, and medical supply lines.

The Grok Gov Model offers features unique to ×AI that are found in no other frontier Al model.6. To further illustrate the uses of the Grok Gov Model within DoW, MSS frontier workflows enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury, a testament to the greatly increased operational efficiency made possible by the Grok Gov Model. More generally, MSS users consume almost 2 billion tokens, the units used to purchase usage of a frontier Al model, on DoW's Top-Secret network every day, which is a critical national security capability for intelligence and operational workflows across the globe.

This immense amount of AI usage is roughly equivalent to 1.5 billion words or up to 6 million pages of text being processed by the technology.7. The Grok Gov Model is foundationally based on commercial Grok architecture. Consequently, the essential language training processes required to build and perfect the models for DoW use require robust commercial infrastructure, as well as a stable energy supply for that infrastructure.

If there is a reduction in the infrastructure available to xAI, such as requested by Plaintiffs in this action, then the Grok Gov Model would be impacted to a similar extent as the commercially available Grok models.

In particular, if Colossus 2 is shut down because it cannot rely on power from the Stanton Road site, XAI would lose capacity to train and develop future, improved versions of Grok. And if xAl is hindered from continuing to improve and upgrade Grok, including the Grok Gov Model, DoW's ability to meet its national security mission and keep pace with adversaries will be impaired.8. In the event of armed conflict or other exigent circumstances affecting nationalsecurity, DoW projects there is a significant likelihood of an immediate and substantial escalation in Al inference demands for Grok Gov Models. The commercial data centers such as Colossus 2 operated by xAl are well-positioned to provide this critical surge capacity needed to sustain wide-ranging national security operations under rigorous conditions because they have the requisite size and capabilities that few other enterprise providers possess.

Therefore, preserving Al's current data center capacity is a matter of paramount national security.9. Moreover, the Department relies on xAl as a primary classified compute infrastructure provider. The critical ability to field its data facilities at massive scale is as foundational to Our modern defense posture as traditional munitions production.Any impediment to commercial data center operations severely diminishes xAl's innate capacity to adequately support current operations, as well as any potential future operations, thereby compromising DoW's strategic computing reserves. In the modern theater of operations, datacenter inference capacity must be recognized not merely as commercial infrastructure, but as a long-term strategic tool vital to maintaining our technological advantage against adversaries.

In addition, the limited competition between frontier model vendors would likely lead to an unsustainable increase in cost to DoW and thus the American taxpayers if DoW were forced to seek alternative vendors.10. If Grok Gov Model cannot be deployed, refined, and upgraded across the DoW due to either limitations in energy supply or limited reserve compute capability, such as those requested by Plaintiffs in this matter, the many tools deployed by military and civilian personnel alike which rely on Grok Gov Models would be severely impacted.I hereby declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and information.