Pete Hegseth handed Elon Musk a co-lead of Project Meridian on Wednesday, a 120-day Pentagon study of how America fights next. He announced it at Quantico before about 600 junior officers and sergeants. Palmer Luckey, who founded the autonomous-weapons maker Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, co-lead with him. Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer and a former Uber executive, oversees the three. None of the three co-leads has served in the military, CNBC reported.
Hegseth gave them 120 days to "ruthlessly map the trajectory of wars, domains and technologies," and he will publish the findings with a classified annex. "The best forecasters of future conflict do not solely reside inside the Pentagon," he said. "There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them."
Musk sells the Pentagon its answers. The Space Force awarded SpaceX $2.29 billion in May for the satellite network that will carry military data, and four days later $4.16 billion for satellites that detect airborne targets, where SpaceX was one of nine companies in the pool. Musk merged his AI company into SpaceX this year, and on Aug. 31 the Pentagon put Grok on GenAI.mil, the portal its own personnel use.
On Tuesday Musk sat beside Trump at the White House AI lunch and signed the accord with his industry. In June 2025 the Army swore in executives from Palantir, Meta and OpenAI as Reserve lieutenant colonels.
So who left the building while the tech crowd walked in?
