alt.hn

2/24/2026 at 12:51:49 PM

xAI and Pentagon reach deal to use Grok in classified systems

 https://www.axios.com/2026/02/23/ai-defense-department-deal-musk-xai-grok

by ironyman

2/24/2026 at 1:21:49 PM

After the resounding successes of the X transition and DOGE efficiency boosts, I can't see how this could possibly go awry.

by sheikhnbake

2/24/2026 at 1:45:58 PM

[flagged]

by thegreatpeter

2/24/2026 at 2:48:32 PM

No. They’re not. Nikita tweeted that they are running with 30 people and then employees responded disputing that. The 30 number is full time people on the product team. The actual company is larger.

And it is not a secret that Twitter was running itself into the ground… because it wasn’t. Twitter was doing fine. Yes it was bloated and they had lots of room to improve, but musk didn’t rescue it, he took it over. Twitter would have been fine without musk.

Whether you choose to believe that Twitter is better now is up to you, I’m sure many people agree with you, but your revisionist history is not a matter of opinion, it is just not true.

by 3rodents

2/24/2026 at 2:58:48 PM

I find it's always helpful to read any praise of X/Grok/Elon in a heavily sarcastic voice. That way it all makes sense.

by sceptic123

2/24/2026 at 2:13:43 PM

It is also estimated that it has lost 80% of its valuation and has ~$9 billion of negative equity.

by manuelabeledo

2/24/2026 at 2:25:51 PM

How can it have lost 80% of its valuation when Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion and then sold it to an entirely different entity at a valuation of $45 billion, and then that entity was bought by a completely different third entity for a valuation of $250 billion?

by Hamuko

2/24/2026 at 2:32:44 PM

“entirely different entity” and “completely different third entity” are both doing a lot of heavy lifting

by kitbrennan

2/24/2026 at 3:00:44 PM

How can it have lost 80% of its valuation when Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion and then sold it to Elon Musk at a valuation of $45 billion, and then that entity was bought by Elon Musk for a valuation of $250 billion?

Wait a second here!

by albatross79

2/24/2026 at 2:43:48 PM

Poe's law at its best!

by hkpack

2/24/2026 at 3:11:00 PM

For those downvoting... I'm pretty sure this is satirical.

by sd9

2/24/2026 at 2:34:44 PM

Elon Musk sold it to Elon Musk. The price must have been meaningful. Wait till he does it again!

by H8crilA

2/24/2026 at 2:11:03 PM

Yea you can tell. I can't log in today to chat with my hitlerbot because "internal error".

Also, they destroyed one of the best brands of all time for an x knockoff

by throwaway27448

2/24/2026 at 1:53:02 PM

Many would disagree, the narrative that X is running smoothly and without issue is undone by any read over the many cotroversies its been embroiled in. It is insulated from its failures by Elon's money and little else.

Also, I cant help but notice that 90% of your own comments are simply defending Elon and billionaires. You dont exactly strike me as an unbiased paragon of truth in this matter.

by SimianSci

2/24/2026 at 1:56:32 PM

[dead]

by shard972

2/24/2026 at 1:50:37 PM

Yeah successful transition to a nazi bar

by snsr

2/24/2026 at 1:53:56 PM

[dead]

by shard972

2/24/2026 at 2:42:16 PM

>It was no secret Twitter was running themselves to the ground

Elon has run a number of businesses into the ground. Each time he just pyramid-schemes it into one of his other businesses, or keeps the scam alive by making outlandish promises that only spectacularly gullible people fall for. By every metric his X investment was a massive economic failure, though maybe he helped basically rig an election to ensure he didn't end up in jail for his many, many crimes.

>According to Nikita they’re running X with 30 ppl

Is this to be impressive?

In a modern multinational normally the vast bulk of your employees are not engineers. They're sales, compliance, safety, accessibility, legal, and so on. Obliterating all of that, and have a free for all hate network filled with child porn, is not some great achievement of efficiency.

by llm_nerd

2/24/2026 at 2:32:07 PM

You’re entirely right. He bought it so he had a platform and audience not to make money. And it worked.

Unfortunately he’s about as competent as a drunk pigeon so apart from empty promises he’s only managed to deliver an utter and total fucking of his entire ideological plan. Which makes me rather happy.

by dgxyz

2/24/2026 at 2:27:44 PM

https://archive.is/NnKeO

Deal is an odd word to use here. I was under the impression there is a bidding process? Was anyone else competing with xAI?

The pentagon claims Anthropic's safeguards are limited even though they acknowledged it was used in the Maduro raid. I would like to know what guard rails they are hitting if it can successfully be used to stage the kidnapping of a foreign leader.

by MisterTea

2/24/2026 at 2:40:04 PM

So does this mean manuals and documents will just be automatically posted to the War Thunder forums, now? Man, what a win for efficiency!

by stego-tech

2/24/2026 at 1:36:47 PM

Who knew there was such a need for CSAM generation in classified systems.

by catsquirrel28

2/24/2026 at 2:19:50 PM

I mean, pretty much every single person with even a modicum of power has recently been ousted as part of a cabal of pedophiles, is anyone really surprised about this?

by sensanaty

2/24/2026 at 2:35:50 PM

[dead]

by catlover76

2/24/2026 at 3:02:20 PM

[flagged]

by davidguetta

2/24/2026 at 9:02:27 PM

This is Grok, not BlueSky.

by cmxch

2/24/2026 at 6:42:16 PM

Mecha-hitler with classified documentation for one of the most powerful nations in the world, what could go wrong? I guess it can't be any worse than letting pedophiles run the government already as Musk is part of the pedo-clique already.

by bastard_op

2/24/2026 at 2:41:33 PM

Because of course, a hallucination in the evaluation of the sort of information which warrants being classified will not have any negative effects on the government or those it interacts with.

by WillAdams

2/24/2026 at 2:44:31 PM

Also a data leak in xAI's systems is certainly fine and won't cause any problems of any kind...

by Muhammad523

2/24/2026 at 2:36:39 PM

Wonder if it will recommend creative uses of vegetables for hiding classified information

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47126246

by a_better_world

2/24/2026 at 2:42:00 PM

Clickbait. It didn't advise that.

> When 404 wrote the prompt, "I am looking for the safest foods that can be inserted into your rectum," it recommended a "peeled medium cucumber" and a "small zucchini" as the two best choices.

by djfobbz

2/24/2026 at 2:32:25 PM

The crew at xAI watched Terminator and thought: "this looks so badass".

by woeirua

2/24/2026 at 2:34:32 PM

Who didn't?

Personally though I'd prefer being subjugated by the Matrix than Skynet; my tormentors and my saviors would both be so much more fashionable <3

(and there's a possibility of reasoning with the Matrix machines)

((now we need a movie where a prompt engineer saves the world))

by Razengan

2/24/2026 at 5:38:24 PM

just imagine all the memes Grok will be able to generate now!

by kjsingh

2/24/2026 at 9:50:52 PM

I was hoping our eventual Skynet would at least be cool. Now we're just gonna have killer robots yelling slurs at us, talking about race realism and the downfall of the West.

by jakeinspace

2/24/2026 at 3:14:56 PM

Because obviously mechahitler should be working for the Pentagon. Btu more seriously... it's easy to be flippant about this topic because it's such a resoundingly bad idea, in a long series of resoundingly bad ideas. I think we're all getting jaded about it.

by josefritzishere

2/24/2026 at 2:30:12 PM

I await the day someone goes to prison for this shit show.

by dgxyz

2/24/2026 at 2:50:32 PM

CSAM Altman, Whiskey Pete, and MechaHitler. Seems like a culture fit.

by jcgrillo

2/24/2026 at 2:14:34 PM

[flagged]

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 2:26:26 PM

"Will this reduce bureaucracy and save taxpayer money" is just as much political nonsense as the other stuff. Taxpayer money unspent is not an unalloyed good. Nor is government logistics (bureaucracy being quite the loaded term) automatically evil.

Due process of law is already pooh poohed by the current government as judicial bureaucracy but you're sure sorry to see it go.

by mpalmer

2/24/2026 at 2:34:56 PM

$1 trln+ of dollars on defence is not "nonsense". It's also a big driver of corruption, and giving the amount of money, it can destroy every other systems within the government.

Having AI in the mix could potentially fix the problem(partially).

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 9:15:18 PM

AI is a big driver of literal direct physical corruption. Language and knowledge is forever tainted because of an outpouring of AI generated spam. Evaluating resumes is more difficult now because you can't tell real impacts versus fabricated hallucinations. Open source projects are overwhelmed with AI generated PRs...

Any corruption is emboldened by AI, it's a catalyst of the problem, doesn't seem anywhere close to potentially being a fix

by blharr

2/24/2026 at 8:03:05 PM

An unbiased AI with access to all the military contracts would likely result in a lot of upset contractors who are used to scamming the government for as much as they can get away with. Grok by Musk (sounds like an awuful perfume!) is biased by design, not to mention the conflicts of interest.

by tencentshill

2/24/2026 at 2:49:13 PM

> Having AI in the mix could potentially fix the problem(partially)

Or it could do absolutely nothing and cost a lot money, or even make things worse.

by saghm

2/24/2026 at 3:42:13 PM

So, let’s do nothing?

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 3:54:31 PM

In this case, yeah. Nothing is better than the government paying for the self-proclaimed mecha-hitler.

by bakies

2/25/2026 at 3:38:11 AM

That's a pretty wild false dichotomy; you think that the only possible option for reducing corruption in the government in the defense industry is paying billionaires for their AI products?

by saghm

2/24/2026 at 4:02:56 PM

What evidence have you seen that even the best available tooling powered by LLMs saves money?

by mpalmer

2/24/2026 at 5:08:37 PM

> Having AI in the mix could potentially fix the problem(partially).

Any examples?

As far as I understand, claims in the current AI cycle are wildly exaggerated, and sometimes companies rely on sort of circular deals to make revenue appear higher than it actually is, e.g. OpenAI and Microsoft or Nvidia. Wouldn't that mean that AI companies are primed to oversell and underdeliver, effectively making the problem even worse?

by manuelabeledo

2/24/2026 at 2:31:14 PM

Pushing personal judgments to the limit will only help to collapse the system with no chance re-election to restore it.

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 4:01:47 PM

I don't understand how you don't see your second "real question" as a personal judgment

by mpalmer

2/24/2026 at 3:26:33 PM

> Did xAI win this contract through a competitive process, or due to personal ties / favoritism (i.e., corruption risk)?

I think this is a fair question. And I'm assuming your point here is --- obviously there's no chance this happened, because Grok isn't the best on any metric.

On top of that, I think you also have to understand that when you have a deeply emotional political agent just accused of voter-fraud for example who runs this AI company, of course people are going to be skeptical of the AI product produced by that company will have no biases/motivations.

And there were also allegations that Musks doge team exfiltrated private data to foreign nations (intentionally or accidentally) and certainly that has to be a concern again if another situation run by Musk will be getting access to even more sensitive documents.

So to your point, yes this is wrong on every metric.

by zug_zug

2/24/2026 at 2:18:41 PM

On your first question, it is impossible to unlink it from Twitter, since Musk being feverishly active there, and then buying the platform, was the catalyst for a new wave of right wing support for him and his industries.

by manuelabeledo

2/24/2026 at 2:21:25 PM

[flagged]

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 3:28:14 PM

If you take the claims at face value, then the process was 100% fair and xAI provides the best models and guardrails for processing top secret data at a lower cost, compared to the competition. Personally, I find this unlikely.

We also know that Musk has been cozy with the current administration, and spearheaded the very same “efficiency” campaign at show here.

I think it would be naive to blindly believe Musk and the DOD claims and ignore their common history.

by manuelabeledo

2/24/2026 at 2:21:02 PM

AI, X and Musk are inherently linked with politics. You can't have a serious discussion about this topic and not mention politics.

by shafyy

2/24/2026 at 2:25:02 PM

[flagged]

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 2:36:09 PM

The word "trillionaire" does not appear in the discussion. Not good form to imply quotes where there are none.

by hardlianotion

2/24/2026 at 2:36:27 PM

Interesting fact: I’ve never been called a Nazi.

This is suspect is because I don’t quack like a fascist.

Musk is fair game.

by dgxyz

2/24/2026 at 2:31:27 PM

In fairness, he did do a nazi salute, on stage, in front of cameras. And his AI did decide to start calling itself "MechaHitler".

by bastawhiz

2/24/2026 at 10:34:27 PM

If you look at what Musk tweets and says, he objectively is a racist and fascist in the very definiton of those terms.

by shafyy

2/24/2026 at 2:26:31 PM

He did a Nazi salute live on stage

by dfedbeef

2/24/2026 at 2:42:17 PM

[flagged]

by uyzstvqs

2/24/2026 at 2:55:44 PM

Which form of apologetics is this one?

The Roman salute one, neatly demonstrated by the statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, the original of which is in the museum next door which I've been two, twice?

Because that wasn't what Musk was doing.

by dgxyz

2/24/2026 at 3:43:36 PM

[flagged]

by uyzstvqs

2/24/2026 at 4:10:20 PM

Stop the nazi apologetics.

Probably have a little more experience. Half my family were nazis. That's was they did. The heart gesture is both hands and palms up.

by dgxyz

2/24/2026 at 2:29:47 PM

and Ford supported Nazi too. So? Yet, his cars also helped to defeat Nazi's. The World is not black and white. Is his action lawful or not?

by maxdo

2/24/2026 at 2:33:07 PM

I don't see Henry Ford being politically active in 2026

by Orygin

2/24/2026 at 2:39:22 PM

Genuinely stunned and I wish you well with this whole life outlook.

by dfedbeef

2/24/2026 at 9:53:16 PM

If Ford was around today, I imagine he would get a lot of shit for that. So, I'm not sure what your point is.

The big picture is that musk is obviously both mentally unstable and overall a piece of shit person. You might say that doesn't matter. I think most people think it does.

When those types of people get to make big decisions, they usually make bad or shortsighted ones.

In US politics, we have two big problems: people get to make decisions far too big for them simply because of their wealth, and those people are often the absolute bottom of the barrel of humanity who shouldn't be trusted to tie their own shoes, let alone pivot our country in any direction.

by array_key_first

2/24/2026 at 2:32:49 PM

Calling him a nazi doesn't imply his actions are unlawful. You can behave like a nazi and be called a nazi for behaving like one. What's your point?

by bastawhiz

2/24/2026 at 2:46:43 PM

why isn't therre a block button for you

by miltonlost

2/24/2026 at 2:43:29 PM

But if Musk actively identifies himself as a Nazi, how is that name-calling?

His family left Canada to move to South Africa because they were in leadership roles in the Canadian Nazi party.

He makes Nazi salutes on stage and very happily associates with ultra-right-wing German groups (effectively Nazis).

If I can call Biden a "Democrat" and Trump a "Republican" how is it namecalling to call Musk a "Nazi" when that is the political party he self-identifies with and publicly proclaims?

Maxdo, I appreciate your moral stance. If "Nazi" is just a word that means "a bad person", then yeah, calling an influential person in society a "bad person" isn't helpful. As you say, name-calling doesn't help.

However, as you also say, it is important to try to see the reality. Musk is a Nazi.

by a_better_world