In a report for yahoo.com, Dominic-Madori Davis says Time reported that Donald Trump consulted Elon Musk’s Grok about how Venezuelans might react if the United States captured Nicolás Maduro. Grok reportedly predicted that many Venezuelans would celebrate Maduro’s downfall. The report also describes separate developments involving the Pentagon’s reported use of Grok Gov and a planned study of advanced battlefield technology.

Source: Musk’s AI chatbot Grok reportedly encouraged Trump to capture Venezuela’s president · yahoo.com

What Grok reportedly told Trump about Maduro

According to the report, Trump met with Musk in December 2025, about a month before Maduro’s reported capture. A source told Time that Trump spent hours consulting Grok, including asking how Venezuelans would respond if their president were captured.

Time’s account, as summarized by Davis, says Grok described Maduro as a “deeply unpopular dictator” and predicted that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. The report places that conversation in the context of U.S. military strikes against Venezuelan boats that Trump had alleged were involved in drug trafficking.

Davis also references earlier reporting from The Atlantic that people had been asking Grok about those strikes and Venezuela’s political climate. No transcript of Trump’s conversation is provided in the report, so the exact exchange and the context of Grok’s response remain unknown.

Why Trump reportedly viewed Grok as “ingenious”

Davis writes that celebrations reportedly took place after the U.S. invasion and Maduro’s capture on January 3. The source told Time that Trump then “came away thinking Grok was ingenious.”

That account describes Trump’s reaction after the reported events. It does not establish that Grok caused the capture, determined U.S. policy, or made an independently validated prediction. Instead, it reports a connection between the consultation, Grok’s reported forecast and Trump’s later impression of the chatbot.

The separate report about Grok Gov and military targeting

The Yahoo article then shifts to a different development. It says the Pentagon’s head of AI reported in June that the military had used Grok Gov to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War.

The report does not specify the targets, explain Grok Gov’s role in those operations or describe how human officials used its output. It also provides no performance evaluation, so the account does not establish how effective the system was or whether Grok is the Pentagon’s preferred AI system. Davis notes that other AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, also have relationships or disputes involving military use.

Musk and Luckey’s planned battlefield-technology study

The report says the Pentagon appointed Musk and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey to co-lead a study examining how advanced technology is and could be used on battlefields.

The report gives no further details about the study’s schedule, methods or expected conclusions. That supports describing its broad purpose, but not predicting what it will recommend or how it might affect military operations.

What remains unestablished

The three developments remain distinct: the reported Trump-Grok consultation, the Pentagon’s reported use of Grok Gov during the Iran War, and the planned study led by Musk and Luckey. The report does not establish the systems’ operational impact, the results of Grok Gov’s reported use or the outcome of the battlefield-technology study.