Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) addressed a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday voicing her concerns regarding the Pentagon’s choice to grant Elon Musk’s firm xAI access to classified networks.

“Grok, the contentious AI model created by xAI, has produced troubling results for users, including offering ‘advice on committing murders and terrorist acts,’ generating antisemitic material, and creating child sexual abuse content,” the correspondence states. 

Warren noted Grok’s “clear absence of sufficient safeguards” could present “serious threats to the safety of U.S. military personnel and the cybersecurity of classified systems.” She insisted that Hegseth provide details on how the Department of Defense intends to “address these possible national security dangers.”

Warren is not the first to raise concerns about Grok, xAI’s contentious chatbot, obtaining access to classified systems. Last month, a coalition of nonprofits called on the government to promptly halt Grok’s deployment in federal agencies, including the DoD, after X users persistently urged the chatbot to transform actual photos of women, and in some instances children, into sexualized images without their consent. On the same day Warren dispatched her letter, a class action lawsuit was initiated against xAI claiming Grok had produced sexual content from authentic images of the plaintiffs as minors. 

The letter follows the Pentagon’s ruling to classify Anthropic as a supply chain risk after the AI company declined to grant the military unrestricted access to its AI systems. Until recently, Anthropic was the sole AI firm with systems ready for classified use. Amid that dispute, the DoD secured an agreement with OpenAI and xAI to utilize their AI systems within classified networks, as reported by Axios. 

A senior official at the Pentagon verified that Grok was integrated for use in a classified environment but is not currently operational.

“It remains uncertain what guarantees or documentation xAI has presented to the Department of Defense regarding Grok’s security measures, data management practices, or safety protocols, and whether the DoD has assessed those assurances prior to reportedly permitting Grok access to classified systems,” Warren states.

Warren sought a copy of the agreement allegedly made between the DoD and xAI concerning the use of Grok in classified systems and an explanation of how the department plans to prevent Grok from being vulnerable to cyberattacks and ensure it will “not disclose sensitive or classified military information.”

(Last week, a former employee from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency supposedly stole personal data from Americans at the Social Security Administration and saved it on a thumb drive — marking the latest allegation of DOGE-related data leakage.)

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell stated that the department “anticipates 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 access to large language models (LLMs) and other AI resources within government-sanctioned cloud environments. It is primarily designed to assist with non-classified tasks such as research, document drafting, and data analysis.