Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its subsidiary xAI are competing in a classified Pentagon contest to develop voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarms. The $100 million, six-month challenge was launched in January and is limited to a handful of companies.
The competition, run by the Defense Innovation Unit and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, aims to create AI systems that translate voice commands into drone operations across air and sea, progressing from software development to live testing. Pentagon officials have said the drones are intended for offensive use, with human-machine interaction directly affecting lethality.
xAI is actively hiring engineers with secret or top-secret clearance to work on federal AI projects and has contracts to integrate its Grok chatbot into Pentagon systems, including a previously reported $200 million deal. Unlike OpenAI, which will only handle “mission control” software, SpaceX and xAI are expected to develop the full swarm system.
Musk has previously warned against autonomous weapons capable of engaging targets without human oversight, having signed a 2015 letter cautioning against such technology.
