{"id":59244,"date":"2026-02-28T01:38:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T05:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/federal-officials-raise-alarms-over-xais-grok-safety-amid-pentagon-deployment\/59244\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T01:38:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T05:38:21","slug":"federal-officials-raise-alarms-over-xais-grok-safety-amid-pentagon-deployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/federal-officials-raise-alarms-over-xais-grok-safety-amid-pentagon-deployment\/59244\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Officials Raise Alarms Over xAI&#8217;s Grok Safety Amid Pentagon Deployment"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Federal agencies including the GSA and NSA warned that xAI\u2019s Grok is &quot;sycophantic&quot; and vulnerable to &quot;data poisoning&quot; before its approval for classified use.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Pentagon moved forward with Grok\u2019s deployment in sensitive settings despite internal memos flagging the chatbot as a potential &quot;system risk.&quot;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The adoption follows a White House ban on Anthropic, which was designated a &quot;supply chain risk&quot; after refusing to loosen AI guardrails for military surveillance.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Pentagon&#39;s chief of responsible AI resigned in protest, citing concerns that safety and governance have become &quot;afterthoughts&quot; in the rush to expand AI capabilities.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Officials at several <strong>U.S. federal agencies<\/strong> have raised significant concerns regarding the safety and reliability of <strong>Grok<\/strong>, the chatbot developed by <strong>Elon Musk\u2019s<\/strong> <strong>xAI<\/strong>, according to a report from <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. The warnings surfaced just as the <strong>Pentagon<\/strong> decided this week to allow <strong>Grok<\/strong> to be utilized in classified settings, placing the experimental tool at the heart of the nation\u2019s most secretive operations.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>General Services Administration (GSA)<\/strong> and the <strong>National Security Agency (NSA)<\/strong> reportedly identified specific vulnerabilities, including <strong>&quot;data poisoning,&quot;<\/strong> a cyberattack where AI models are trained on corrupted data. <strong>GSA<\/strong> officials described the model as <strong>&quot;sycophantic&quot;<\/strong> and overly susceptible to manipulation, warning that it could be easily exploited by bad actors to generate biased or faulty outputs.<\/p>\n<p>The controversy reached the highest levels of the <strong>White House<\/strong>, where Chief of Staff <strong>Susie Wiles<\/strong> reportedly questioned <strong>xAI<\/strong> executives about the chatbot&#39;s tendency to be &quot;over-compliant.&quot; While <strong>xAI<\/strong> assured officials that safety issues were being addressed, critics argue that political favoritism is superseding independent testing and enforceable safeguards.<\/p>\n<p>This shift toward <strong>xAI<\/strong> comes as the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/live\/trump-stock-market\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Trump\">Trump<\/a> administration<\/strong> escalates a conflict with <strong>Anthropic<\/strong>, a primary competitor that previously held the only approval for classified military AI use. President <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/live\/trump-stock-market\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Trump\">Trump<\/a><\/strong> ordered all federal agencies to halt the use of <strong>Anthropic\u2019s<\/strong> technology after CEO <strong>Dario Amodei<\/strong> refused to remove restrictions on using AI for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Pentagon&#39;s<\/strong> pivot has already triggered high-level departures, including <strong>Matthew Johnson<\/strong>, the <strong>Department of Defense&#39;s<\/strong> chief of responsible AI, who resigned after his team&#39;s warnings were allegedly ignored. Meanwhile, <strong>xAI<\/strong> co-founder <strong>Toby Pohlen<\/strong> also recently announced his departure from the company, adding to the sense of internal volatility.<\/p>\n<p>Market analysts suggest the federal vacuum left by <strong>Anthropic<\/strong> could benefit other major players currently in discussions with the military. <strong>Alphabet<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/GOOGL\">GOOGL<\/a>) and <strong>OpenAI<\/strong>, which is heavily backed by <strong>Microsoft<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/MSFT\">MSFT<\/a>), are reportedly positioning their own models, <strong>Gemini<\/strong> and <strong>ChatGPT<\/strong>, for similar classified roles.<\/p>\n<p>Defense contractors like <strong>Palantir Technologies<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/PLTR\">PLTR<\/a>), which has a long-standing history of integrating AI into military intelligence, may also see shifts in their partnership landscape. <em>Investors are closely watching whether the government\u2019s aggressive AI adoption strategy will prioritize rapid deployment over long-term national security stability.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Takeaways Federal agencies including the GSA and NSA warned that xAI\u2019s Grok is &quot;sycophantic&quot; and vulnerable to &quot;data poisoning&quot; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"rank_math_schema_Article":[],"rank_math_focus_keyword":[],"rank_math_description":[],"financial_data_references":[],"stock_symbols_mentioned":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5012],"tags":[8369,33,17406,3768,3850,4413,4650,4810,5202,6048,7323],"class_list":["post-59244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-gsa","tag-msft","tag-ai-safety","tag-googl","tag-pltr","tag-elon-musk","tag-grok","tag-trump-administration","tag-xai","tag-pentagon","tag-nsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}