Musk returns to government for 120-day Pentagon warfare study

Musk and Luckey hold extensive Pentagon contracts

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday named Elon Musk a co-leader of Project Meridian, a 120-day Department of Defense study on the future of warfare, marking the SpaceX CEO’s first return to government work since his tenure leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk will be joined on the panel by Palmer Luckey, CEO of the defense-tech firm Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House.

According to a Defense Department press release, Project Meridian’s goal is “identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield.” The project will produce an unclassified public report of its recommendations at the end of the 120-day window.

The Defense Department said the project intends to look at how the U.S. military can utilize new technology and also carry out warfare in untested terrains including subterranean depths and on the moon.

In a memo announcing the appointments, Hegseth framed the project as a response to what he described as rapid advances in military-relevant technology. “We are witnessing rapid advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, biotechnology, among other critical high-tech areas,” Hegseth said. “Combined, these new domains, new ways of fighting, and technological developments will profoundly alter the character of warfare.” Hegseth added: “To maintain global dominance, the United States must anticipate future operational environments and act decisively to develop the tools to dominate in them.”

The Guardian reported that Musk and Luckey are “far from independent arbiters of the future of warfare.” Both have extensive Defense Department contracts through their companies, the newspaper added, and Anduril’s business is centered on the government purchasing products the company advertises as “the latest advance in warfare.”

Gingrich was appointed as a member of the Defense Policy Board in December 2020 during the first Trump administration but was dismissed less than three months later after Joe Biden became president. Going back to the 1990s, he has been publicly warning about the threat of an electromagnetic-pulse attack that could knock out U.S. power grids.

The Guardian reported that Project Meridian brings Musk back into government work a little more than a year after his “explosive tenure” as leader of DOGE, an effort the newspaper said “gutted federal agencies while failing to achieve its stated cost-cutting goals.” Unlike Musk’s DOGE role — which, the Guardian reported, “drew heavy public criticism and costly boycotts of his products” — the scope and goals of Project Meridian “appear as if [they] will be much less time-consuming for the tech mogul,” according to the newspaper.

Musk left the government-efficiency role last year after a public falling-out with Trump. The Guardian described Hegseth’s announcement as “a sign of how Musk has re-entered the good graces of the Trump administration.”

Project Meridian is scheduled to deliver its unclassified public report in approximately four months.