Elon Musk is returning to an official advisory role in the US government, co-leading a Pentagon study on the future of warfare, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday. Speaking at the Quantico military base in Virginia, Hegseth said "Project Meridian" will be "an effort led by America's best minds to study the future of warfare." Musk will co-lead it with Palmer Luckey, 34-year-old co-founder of defence technology company Anduril Industries, and Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old Republican former House speaker. Hegseth set a deadline of 120 days for the findings.
Hegseth said the aim is to "creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master." Members will include hand-picked private-sector leaders and experts from the innovation, academic and policy worlds. He described America's innovators and technologists as "a unique source of American advantage, one our adversaries do not have." According to German reporting, he also addressed autonomous warfare, meaning weapons and AI systems that can act without direct human intervention, and announced a new four-star command to expand autonomous and robotic capabilities.
Musk is no newcomer to the Pentagon. His company SpaceX is building satellite networks for Trump's planned "Golden Dome" missile defence shield, and his AI firm xAI signed a deal this year allowing the military to use its Grok chatbot on classified systems. He also leads Tesla, which is ramping up production of Optimus humanoid robots. He previously headed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which drove sweeping federal job cuts, before leaving in May 2025. He later fell out publicly with Trump over the president's spending legislation, but the two have reconciled. Musk has resumed political giving, with at least $90 million directed toward November's midterm elections, according to tallies of Federal Election Commission filings. This week he sat beside Trump at a lunch with AI executives, where tech leaders signed a voluntary safety accord the president called "morally binding" but which carries no legal force.
The announcement came in a speech in which Hegseth also said the US has cut its generals and admirals by 20 per cent: 10 per cent fired and a further 10 per cent of positions eliminated. He called this "accountability"; the media, he noted, calls it a purge. He used derogatory language about transgender people and others as he said the military now has only "warriors." Critics have questioned the opaque reasons behind many dismissals of senior officers.
The project comes amid debate over military use of AI. The Pentagon recently clashed with the AI company Anthropic, which refused to allow its technology to be used in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans; the Pentagon insists on the right to any lawful use, and Hegseth had Anthropic designated a supply-chain risk. Musk's deepening role, given his commercial interests in defence, places a close ally of the president at the centre of shaping how the US military approaches AI and robotics.