The federal civil trial in San Francisco between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has entered its second week, exposing the bitter personal and ideological rift at the heart of the artificial intelligence industry. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI before departing in 2018, now accuses his former protégé of betraying the venture’s original nonprofit mission by pursuing profit and military contracts. To defend himself, Altman retained William Savitt, the Wachtell litigator who previously forced Musk to complete his Twitter acquisition. The courtroom atmosphere, as reporters on the scene describe it, is electric with the tension of two titans whose feud has migrated from X posts to legal briefs. Yet viewed from Silicon Valley, this spectacle is merely the most visible symptom of a deeper transformation: the industry’s official narrative of AI as a benevolent force for humanity is crumbling under the weight of greed, power, and militarisation.

That shift was underscored on the same week by the Pentagon’s announcement of partnership agreements with seven technology companies — including Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, and SpaceX — to integrate AI into classified military networks. The stated goal is to “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” a euphemism that analysts in London note marks a dramatic acceleration of AI’s deployment in lethal contexts. Notably absent from the list is Anthropic, which remains locked in a legal dispute with the Trump administration over the ethics of weaponised AI. The development has reignited internal revolt at Google, where more than 600 employees recently signed a letter warning of “irreparable damage” to the company’s reputation — a near-verbatim echo of the successful 2018 campaign against Project Maven. This time, however, the company appears to have chosen compliance over conscience.

From Europe, the trial has also yielded a revealing admission: Musk testified that his own AI, Grok, was “partially” trained using outputs from OpenAI’s models — a technique known as knowledge distillation that critics say blurs the line between competition and copying. French commentators observe that such practices are standard in the industry, yet they undermine Musk’s moral high ground in the lawsuit. Meanwhile, economists in Frankfurt point to a KPMG survey showing that 52 per cent of American workers now fear AI will eliminate their jobs, nearly double the figure from a year ago. The promise of mass productivity gains, they argue, demands equally massive social compensation — a debate conspicuously absent from the courtroom and boardroom alike.

Looking ahead, the convergence of these developments paints a stark picture: the AI industry is no longer pretending to be a neutral tool for progress. The real centres of power lie not in San Francisco courtrooms but in Abu Dhabi boardrooms, Hangzhou data centres, and Pentagon supply chains. As one Swiss commentator put it, the most transformative technology of our era is being shaped by those least capable of handling success. The outcome of the Musk-Altman trial will determine control over one company; the broader struggle over AI’s role in war, work, and society has barely begun.