Trump asked Grok chatbot about capturing Maduro, Time reports

Donald Trump spent hours asking Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot about Venezuela during a secret meeting with Musk in December 2025, about a month before the US invaded Venezuela and captured President Nicolas Maduro, Time magazine’s new cover story reports.

Trump asked Grok how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of their president, a source told Time. Grok replied that Maduro was a “deeply unpopular dictator” and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. The meeting came roughly seven months after Musk left his role in the Trump administration at the Department of Government Efficiency, and as Trump was ordering US military strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were involved in drug trafficking.

When celebrations broke out after the US seized Maduro on 3 January 2026, Trump “came away thinking Grok was ingenious”, the source told Time. Time does not say Grok shaped the decision, and its account rests on an unnamed official; no public comment on it has come from the White House or xAI.

The account underlines how deeply Grok has penetrated the administration’s orbit. TechCrunch notes that in June the Pentagon’s head of AI said the military used Gov Grok to deploy and strike targets during the Iran war, and that earlier this week the Pentagon tapped Musk and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey to co-lead a study on advanced technology in warfare.