Pete Hegseth installed Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey in advisory roles in a Pentagon project about the future of warfare, placing two of the country’s best-known defense-tech figures closer to the center of a new military effort. Hegseth announced the project, called Project Meridian, at an event in Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday.
The move matters because Luckey and Musk are not just outside advisers looking in. Musk has spent over a quarter of a billion dollars in the run-up to Trump’s 2024 victory, and his SpaceX has become a crucial contractor for US space programs since 2018 while also emerging as a key player in Trump’s Golden Dome ballistic missile defense project, which could cost as much as $1.2tn. Luckey founded Anduril, a defense contracting company that has already won significant federal contracts, and he has acquired manufacturers of underwater drones, UAVs and space technology.
Project Meridian will be led by Pentagon official Emil Michael, with Newt Gingrich also included. Hegseth’s decision ties the project to men with deep political and commercial reach at a moment when the Pentagon is trying to define what the next phase of warfare should look like. For readers searching for Palmer Luckey, the appointment lands beside a broader picture: he and his wife co-hosted a $50,000-a-head effort to Keep the Senate on 22 August, the most recent event mentioned in the account, and he has become one of the most important bundlers for Republican candidates on the west coast.
That overlap is what gives the move its edge. The same advisers who will help shape thinking on future warfare run companies that profit from federal defense contracting, raising obvious conflict-of-interest questions even before any formal decision-making rules are spelled out. Luckey has also been talking in unusually specific terms about where combat is headed, saying earlier this year that warfare in the second half of this century would involve subterranean conflict, with vehicles moving through the crust of the earth the same way submarines move through the water and with what he described as working prototypes of subterranean systems.
Project Meridian now has a leader, advisers and a name, but the unanswered question is what power those advisers will actually hold. If the project is meant to steer Pentagon thinking on future warfare, the next real test is whether it becomes a forum for ideas or a channel for influence from the same companies that stand to benefit from the answers.
