Trump Consulted Grok Before Invading Venezuela, Report Says

President Trump reportedly consulted Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot before the United States invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, in January 2026, according to Time magazine.

In December 2025, roughly a month before the invasion, Trump held a secret meeting with Musk — approximately seven months after Musk had departed his role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). During that meeting, Trump reportedly “spent hours” interacting with Grok, including asking how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of Maduro.

Grok told Trump that Maduro was a “deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall,” Time reported, citing a source. When celebrations followed the January 3 invasion, Trump “came away thinking Grok was ingenious,” that same source said.

The exchange took place against a backdrop of growing U.S. military involvement in the region. Beginning in September 2025, Trump had ordered military strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were involved in drug trafficking. At the time, The Atlantic reported that many people were turning to Grok for information about those strikes and Venezuela’s political climate.

Grok’s apparent influence on the administration’s decision-making may be expanding. In June 2026, the Pentagon’s head of AI stated that the military used Gov Grok to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War. Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that Musk and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey have been tapped to co-lead a study on how advanced technology is used in battlefields.

Grok is not the only AI model with a Defense Department relationship — OpenAI also holds an agreement with the DoD, and Anthropic has been in ongoing discussions over how its models can be used for military intelligence and warfare. However, Grok’s reported role in shaping presidential decisions suggests it may hold a particularly prominent position under the current administration.