TIME: Trump Consulted Grok Ahead of Operation to Capture Maduro

Published: October 2, 2026 – 11:34 UTC

In December 2025, Donald Trump held a closed-door meeting with Elon Musk and spent several hours asking questions to the Grok chatbot.
According to TIME, the U.S. president was interested in how Venezuelans would react to the capture of Nicolas Maduro.
After the operation, he, according to the outlet’s sources, considered Grok “ingenious.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, during a closed-door meeting with Elon Musk in December 2025, used his Grok chatbot to assess how Venezuelans might react to the capture of the country’s then-president Nicolas Maduro, TIME reports.

The meeting took place about a month before the U.S. operation in Caracas, during which Maduro was captured. According to a source cited by the outlet, Trump spent several hours asking Grok questions about his presidency, the political situation, and the potential consequences of the operation.

What Grok Told Trump about Maduro

At the time of the meeting, the U.S. was already carrying out strikes on Venezuelan boats that the Trump administration accused of transporting drugs. According to TIME, the president asked Grok how Venezuela’s population might react if the U.S. captured Maduro.

According to an official who attended the meeting, the chatbot replied that Maduro was a “repressive and deeply unpopular dictator,” and that many Venezuelans would likely “celebrate his downfall.”

After it became known in February 2026 that the U.S. had carried out an operation to capture Maduro, celebrations did indeed take place in Venezuela. According to TIME sources, Trump later considered Grok “ingenious.”

Earlier, users had also turned to Grok with questions about U.S. strikes on Venezuelan boats and the political situation in the country. In this way, the chatbot had already been used to discuss events surrounding Venezuela even before Trump’s meeting with Musk.

Grok Is Increasingly Being Used in U.S. Government Systems

The story of Trump’s consultation unfolded against the backdrop of a broader rollout of generative AI across the work of the U.S. government and military structures.

In June 2026, a Pentagon spokesperson reported that Gov Grok was being used for work related to deploying and tasking strikes during the war with Iran. Separately, the Pentagon announced the integration of Grok into its own AI infrastructure.

Grok is not the only model used by US government agencies. OpenAI also has a deal with the Pentagon, while the use of Anthropic models in the military sphere remains controversial. In particular, the US administration and Anthropic have diverged in their positions on the potential use of AI for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

As a reminder, Trump recently signed an executive order ushering in the era of “superintelligence” and reached an agreement with tech giants on four levels of oversight.

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Source: Incrypted