Swarm wars: Musk firms compete in secret Pentagon trial

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and artificial intelligence firm xAI are quietly competing in a high-stakes Pentagon challenge to develop voice-activated drone swarm technology, according to a Bloomberg report.

The classified $100 million competition, launched in January, seeks to create advanced autonomous systems capable of translating spoken battlefield commands into coordinated movements across multiple drones operating in the air and at sea. Bloomberg reported that SpaceX and xAI are among a small group of companies selected to participate in the six-month contest.

The effort marks a notable shift for Musk. While SpaceX is a long-established defense contractor and Musk has championed AI innovation, he has also previously warned against creating “new tools for killing people.” His companies’ participation in a weapons-focused AI initiative could reignite debate around the ethical boundaries of autonomous warfare.

The Pentagon competition is being run jointly by the Defense Innovation Unit, which works to bring Silicon Valley startups into military projects, and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, a newer arm under US Special Operations Command. Bloomberg reported that the initiative builds on earlier federal efforts to rapidly scale autonomous drone production.

The project will unfold in phases, beginning with software development before advancing to live testing on operational platforms. According to Bloomberg, later stages of the challenge include improving “target-related awareness and sharing” and ultimately enabling systems to carry out missions from “launch to termination.”

Defense officials indicated when announcing the program that the technology could have offensive applications, noting that human-machine interaction would directly affect the “lethality and effectiveness” of the systems.

xAI, founded by Musk in 2023, has recently stepped up hiring efforts for engineers with active US security clearances at secret or top-secret levels, according to Bloomberg. The company has already secured Pentagon contracts to integrate its Grok chatbot into certain government systems and previously won a $200 million defense agreement.

SpaceX, meanwhile, has historically focused on launch vehicles, satellite systems and national security payloads rather than offensive weapons software.

Bloomberg reported that unlike some competitors, SpaceX and xAI are expected to work across the entire drone swarm project, rather than limiting their roles to specific components.

OpenAI is also linked to the competition through a submission led by Applied Intuition, Bloomberg previously reported. However, OpenAI’s involvement is expected to focus solely on translating battlefield voice commands into digital instructions, not on operating the drones or managing weapons systems.

The integration of generative AI tools into weapons platforms has raised concerns within parts of the defense establishment, Bloomberg reported. Some officials worry about relying on large language models — which are known to produce errors or “hallucinations” — for operational decisions without meaningful human oversight.