{"id":314743,"date":"2025-11-26T12:19:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T12:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/314743\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T12:19:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T12:19:17","slug":"musks-ai-fortress-hides-a-secret-that-trump-will-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/314743\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk\u2019s AI Fortress Hides a Secret That Trump Will Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk may have put the Pentagon at risk of espionage and sabotage by quietly purchasing 2,000 tons of Chinese-made transformers for xAI\u2019s Colossus data center. <\/p>\n

xAI\u2019s Colossus, located in Memphis, Tennessee, is the world\u2019s largest AI supercomputer and a prime target for hackers due to its ties to the U.S. government. <\/p>\n

The facility was gifted a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense in July to \u201cdevelop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges\u2026 across warfighting and enterprise domains.\u201d The Department of Homeland Security uses a custom version of Grok, X\u2019s AI chatbot, which Colossus powers. <\/p>\n

\"ColossusxAI’s Colossus data center has contracts with the Pentagon and the DHS. xAI <\/p>\n

U.S. Customs Data<\/a> reveals that Colossus has been importing its transformers from Shanghai for at least a year. OligarchWatch<\/a> reported on the discovery on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Transformers convert high-voltage electricity into usable power for AI data centers. xAI CEO Elon Musk, 54, has called the need for transformers a “bottleneck<\/a>\u201c that stifles the growth of AI companies. To bypass this, xAI has been buying Chinese-made transformers in bulk to gain a competitive edge. <\/p>\n

\"USTrump has made beating China in the AI race a priority in his second term. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

The AI community has warned about the risks posed by Chinese-made transformers for years. <\/p>\n

In 2021, the National Intelligence Council<\/a> warned, \u201cChina is the world\u2019s leading supplier of advanced grid components for ultrahigh-voltage systems, such as transformers, circuit breakers, and inverters, which we assess creates cyber vulnerability risks.\u201d <\/p>\n

Anthropic<\/a>, one of xAI\u2019s competitors, reported in July 2025 that Chinese products in the AI supply chain have \u201cperiodically\u201d been found to have \u201cbackdoors.\u201d A backdoor is a stealthy way for a hacker to gain access to data contained on a computer. <\/p>\n

In April, AI security firm Gladstone AI<\/a> reported that Chinese transformers \u201ccan be used as back-doors for sabotage operations.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIf a superintelligence project were kick-started under nominal conditions, unsecured supply chains for AI hardware, as well as electrical and cooling infrastructure could embed physical CCP trojan horses deep into the data centers that house some of the most national security-critical technology America will ever build,\u201d reads the report. <\/p>\n

xAI responded to a request for comment by saying only, \u201cLegacy Media Lies.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ElonElon Musk’s xAI received an “F” in several key safety categories in a 2024 survey. Brendan Smialowski\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

xAI\u2019s indifference to the security risks posed by Chinese transformers is consistent with the company\u2019s lax cybersecurity protocols, long a target of criticism from AI experts. <\/p>\n

In the Dec. 2024 Future of Life AI Safety Index<\/a>, xAI scored an \u201cF\u201d rating in Risk Assessment, Safety Frameworks, Existential Safety Strategy, and Governance and Accountability. <\/p>\n

For the survey, xAI safety adviser Dan Hendrycks responded \u201cNo\u201d to questions asking, \u201cDoes your organization report AI incidents, adverse events and near-misses related to frontier AI models to the appropriate government(s)?\u201d and \u201cDoes your organization share cyber threat intelligence information with the appropriate government(s) and other leading AI firms?\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk may have put the Pentagon at risk of espionage and sabotage by quietly purchasing 2,000 tons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,1930,2420,308,111,74],"class_list":["post-314743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-diplomacy","tag-government","tag-horizontal","tag-politics","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}