Musk was one of the loudest voices warning about AI and the risks of autonomous warfare. Now he’s set the precedent every other AI company is being pressured to follow.
26.02.2026 00:43
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Musk was one of the loudest voices warning about AI and the risks of autonomous warfare. Now he’s set the precedent every other AI company is being pressured to follow.
Anthropic has refused, blocking surveillance and autonomous weapons use. Secretary of Defense Hegseth threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to force them to comply and gave them until 5:01pm Friday to back down.
Musk didn’t just go back on what he promised, he also opened the door for the Pentagon to pressure every other AI company to accept the same terms. Google and OpenAI are reportedly in talks with the Pentagon to expand their model access for unrestricted DoD use.
Since then, Musk has aided the government surveillance he once challenged: X continues sharing data with law enforcement through Dataminr.
It’s not just weapons. In 2023, X petitioned SCOTUS to be able to disclose how often the government demanded its users' data, arguing that "surveillance of electronic communications is both a fertile ground for government abuse and a lightning-rod political topic…"
But in 2026, SpaceX and xAI entered the Pentagon's competition to build autonomous drone swarms — exactly what he pledged not to do. A Pentagon official confirmed that the drones will be used for offensive purposes.
In 2018, Musk signed a pledge alongside DeepMind's founders, 3,800+ individuals and 274 organizations:
"We will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons."
This week, xAI agreed to let the Pentagon use Grok in classified systems under the “all lawful use” standard, enabling Grok to be used for autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance (something other companies have objected to).
Elon Musk spent a decade warning the world about killer robots and AI surveillance, including in a 2017 open letter: "We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close."
Now he’s the one opening it. 🧵
That’s why we’re keeping track of the AI industry’s influence operations in 2026, both disclosed and discreet.
Read our full story: www.modelrepublic.org/articles/ano...
AI policy is too important for the public conversation to be shaped by discreet influence campaigns and heavy spending from an industry that has billions of dollars riding on the regulatory environment remaining friendly to its interests.
This gap in our disclosure laws mattered less when influencers were hawking protein powder and mobile apps.
It matters a great deal more when they are pushing policy positions on behalf of trillion-dollar industries on questions that will shape the economy and society forever.
If a company buys a TV ad opposing a bill, it has to say who paid for it. On social media, no such rules exist.
A paid influencer's post can be easily mistaken for a genuine opinion.
Data centers are, for better or worse, deeply unpopular with the public with many local and national attempts to slow their development emerging.
That may explain why some in the industry are manufacturing grassroots support instead.
Four of the accounts have documented ties to Influenceable, the same PR firm we flagged last time. They all promoted the film "Sound of Freedom,” a campaign run by Influenceable. Ryan Fournier also tweeted about the AI OVERWATCH Act.
Starting on Sunday, seven posts from large MAGA accounts attacked Florida's HB 1007.
Each one warned about higher taxes and job losses, and called for the bill to be killed.
It felt eerily similar to the AI OVERWATCH campaign we documented last month.
If you saw MAGA influencers raging over a data center bill yesterday, you were probably looking at (another) paid astroturf.
We've documented this happening twice in two months, with nearly identical messaging and posts timed to hit just before key votes. Who is funding it? 🧵
Great to see OpenAI adopting a new whistleblower policy which, while flawed in important ways, nonetheless puts the company ahead of its peers on this issue.
The industry still has a long way to go, but this is a step in the right direction.
Last August, alongside @consumerfed.bsky.social and others, we warned that xAI hadn't done enough to prevent non-consensual sexual deepfakes.
Now the EU has announced its investigation into the company.
Good to see regulators taking this seriously.
Read the full story at our new publication, Model Republic: www.modelrepublic.org/articles/rig...
We reached out to Nvidia, Influenceable, and every reachable account mentioned in our report.
None responded.
There's no smoking gun, but each of these accounts independently gaining an interest in the minutiae of semiconductor policy on the same day seems unlikely.
Multiple posts suggested the bill would benefit China, with one saying Congress could "greenlight sales" of chips to China or help our adversaries.
The bill does the opposite. It creates a mechanism for Congress to block chip exports to adversary nations.
Various posts point fingers at democrats, with one calling the bill "sponsored by a long list of degenerate Democrats."
In reality, the bill was introduced by Republican Brian Mast. Every single cosponsor is a Republican. There are no Democrats on the bill.
Undisclosed paid influence campaigns are ethically questionable but increasingly common on social media.
A deeper problem in this particular case is that the posts are full of claims that don't survive contact with the actual bill.
On January 15, the same day these posts started appearing, White House AI Czar David Sacks quote-tweeted Wall Street Mav's post with a single word: "Correct."
The administration is listening to this campaign. That's the point.
If this were paid, who could be behind it? Who benefits from killing this bill?
One possibility is Nvidia, which has been lobbying hard to sell chips to China. CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump in December and publicly opposed the legislation.
Approximately half of these accounts have documented or apparent ties to Influenceable, a PR firm that pays conservative influencers for undisclosed posts.
We can't prove Influenceable ran this campaign, but the overlap is suggestive.
Other themes from the posts include handing control to Congress, stripping Trump of his presidential authority, hamstringing/tying his hands, and blaming the bill on Democrats.
Two posts even contained the same typo, writing “AL” instead of “AI” (It's a hard mistake to make when writing, but an easy mistake to miss when copy-pasting from a shared document.)
Two more used the exact phrase "Democrats and their Deep State partners.”
The posts weren't just similar in opinion.
They shared the same phrases, the same metaphors, and the same false claims.
8 accounts used "win/lose the AI race."
7 used "strip Trump of power."
5 used "hands control to Congress."
3 named "Hakeem Jeffries" specifically.