Perhaps leaning into the idea that its stuff often explodes, SpaceX is allegedly expanding into weapons development. Bloomberg reports that Elon Musk’s company has entered the bidding for a $100 million competition to create voice-controlled, AI-enabled drone swarms. SpaceX will be joined by Elon Musk’s other company xAI, which owns social media platform X and the child pornography-prone chatbot Grok… and which is itself now owned by SpaceX. The idea would be to create a swarm of multiple drones that a commander could simply verbally command to hunt down a particular target.
Given AI’s habit of hallucinating and Grok’s own particular concerns, this might not exactly inspire confidence. But the Russo-Ukrainian War has proven that drones are a core part of 21st century warfare, and the Pentagon is aggressively trying to ramp up its own drone production. So it’s no wonder that the Department of Defense is spinning up competitions to see if it can foster R&D in this sector. The competition is being run by the Defense Innovation Unit, which exists to bring tech companies into the defense industry, and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Yes, the military’s drone war team is called DAWG. Maybe that’s what got Musk to enter the competition after DOGE was kicked out of Washington.
SpaceX and/or xAI go to war
SpaceX does have a long history with DoD: its rockets have become the primary launch vehicle for military satellites, and Starlink is building up a military twin called Starshield. But it has never produced or even assisted with actual weaponry before. In fact, unless you count the remotely-piloted barges that act as landing platforms for returning rocket boosters, SpaceX hasn’t done much with drones, either. So if the company is indeed entering this competition, it must also be effectively starting up a whole new business and engineering division.
Possibly, this really has more to do with xAI than the rest of SpaceX proper. The company (now subsidiary) has been struggling financially, requiring a $2 billion cash infusion from yet another Musk company, Tesla. However, it also has DoD ties, as the company received $200 million to integrate Grok into military networks. Musk may have calculated that the defense sector was the best place to start making real money off of AI. If that’s the case, expect a lot more AI-enabled weaponry from the company soon.
But let’s be clear here: making exaggerated claims about driverless taxis is not the same level of risk as exaggerated claims about flying bombs. If Musk is really getting into the business of ordnance, let’s hope that comes along with a high degree of discipline and a low tolerance for failure. But at least to date, that hasn’t exactly been the culture at his companies.
