Trump Reportedly Asked Grok for Its Opinion Before the Venezuela Raid That Captured Maduro
The Report
Time magazine's new cover story on the president reports that in December 2025, about a month before U.S. forces invaded Venezuela and seized Nicolás Maduro, President Trump held a clandestine Oval Office meeting with Elon Musk. During that meeting, Trump spent hours asking Grok questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official who was present.
At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes on Venezuelan boats he claimed were smuggling drugs. He asked the chatbot how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. Grok told him Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall.
On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife in Caracas and flew them to New York. Celebrations broke out in the streets, and Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was "ingenious."
AI Is Moving Into the War Room
The anecdote lands as AI models move deeper into the Pentagon. The military has already used "Gov Grok" to deploy and strike targets during the Iran war, per the Pentagon's head of AI. Earlier this week, the Pentagon tapped Musk and Anduril's Palmer Luckey to co-lead a study on how advanced technology is used on battlefields.
OpenAI and Anthropic also have defense agreements, though Anthropic has gone back and forth over how its models can be used for military intelligence. Grok may be becoming the administration's favorite.
The Options-Market Angle
Stories like this keep defense-tech and AI names in the headlines, and headline-driven names tend to see elevated options activity around catalysts. Traders watching this space should keep an eye on Tesla ($TSLA), Musk's flagship public company and the closest liquid proxy for the Grok story.
Palantir ($PLTR) is the go-to name whenever AI meets the defense establishment. Broader AI-infrastructure plays will move with any escalation in the AI-military news cycle, so watch flow on the SPDR S&P 500 ETF ($SPY) and Invesco QQQ ($QQQ) around these headlines.
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