In his State of the Force address at Quantico on September 30, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian, a study of future warfare that the Pentagon's release says “will be co-directed by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich.” Hegseth's memo directs the department's chief technology officer, Emil Michael, to commission it “through a partner organization” to “identify which weapons and technologies warfighters will need” and “propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing and fielding these capabilities,” with findings due January 28, 2027. Hegseth explained the outside leadership: “There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them.”
Two of the three run companies that sell to the Pentagon. Musk's SpaceX won a $4.16 billion Space Force satellite contract in May, days after another, and Luckey's Anduril won a Marine Corps counter-drone contract worth up to $642 million in 2025, CNBC reported. Fox News wrote that the arrangement “could also raise potential conflict-of-interest questions.” The Pentagon has not said who the partner organization is, or whether the three are paid, serve as special government employees or have signed ethics agreements; it told TechCrunch it had “nothing further to provide beyond the Secretary's comments.” The Guardian called it Musk's first return to government since he ran DOGE (see The Pentagon Awards a $20B Sole-Source Contract to Anduril Days After Jared Kushner's Brother Co-Led a $4B Investment in the Company and The Pentagon Says in Court It Used Musk's Grok AI to Help Target Iran Strikes, Firing 2,000 Munitions in 96 Hours).