San Francisco Frontiers - Musk returns to US government for Pentagon war study

Musk served as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he spearheaded sweeping job cuts across the US federal government, before departing in May 2025.

In a speech Wednesday at the Quantico military base, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said "Project Meridian" will be "an effort led by America's best minds to study the future of warfare."

"We are leveraging a unique source of American advantage, one our adversaries do not have: our innovators, our senior leaders and our technologists," Hegseth said.

Musk will be a co-leader of Project Meridian alongside Palmer Luckey, the 34-year-old co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries, and Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old Republican former House speaker.

Musk's companies are already major Pentagon contractors, including SpaceX building satellite networks for Trump's planned "Golden Dome" missile defense shield.

His artificial intelligence firm xAI this year signed a deal allowing the military to use its Grok chatbot on classified systems.

In 2024, Musk threw his support behind Trump and helped his return to the White House, but the men later had a high-profile blow-up over the president's spending legislation.

The two have since reconciled, and Musk has again become a frequent presence at the White House, though less visibly than during his previous stint, when he often visited the Oval Office, most memorably with his young son on his shoulders.

On Tuesday he was seated next to Trump at a lunch with artificial intelligence executives, where he joined other tech leaders in signing a voluntary AI safety accord that the president described as "morally binding."

Last week, Musk attended the state dinner Trump hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and in May he flew to Beijing on Air Force One as part of the business delegation accompanying Trump on his state visit to China.

He also resumed giving to Republican causes, including multimillion-dollar donations to individual candidates and conservative political groups.

Musk, who spent more than $250 million backing Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election, has given at least $90 million toward November's midterm elections, according to tallies of Federal Election Commission filings.

Hegseth said the project's purpose is to "creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master."

Project members will include hand-picked private sector leaders and subject matter experts from across the innovation, academic and policy ecosystems.

Hegseth said he has directed Project Meridian's findings to be completed and submitted within 120 days.

W.Thompson--SFF