Elon Musk is back on the government payroll, so to speak, and this time he gets to think about blowing things up. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that Musk will help lead Project Meridian, a Pentagon study on the future of warfare, returning him to an advisory role in the Trump administration after a very public exit from it.
Joining Musk in the effort are Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. That is, frankly, one of the more interesting group projects since the science fair. Hegseth framed the team as a uniquely American asset, saying, “We are leveraging a unique source of American advantage, one our adversaries do not have: our innovators, our senior leaders and our technologists, big thinkers and doers who will forecast the creative solution for tomorrow’s conflicts.”
Drones, Missiles, And Musk’s Big Return
Musk has never been shy about his vision for future combat. In 2024 he argued that the future of war would be “all about drones and hypersonic missiles,” and predicted that “fighter jets piloted by humans will be destroyed very quickly.” So naturally, the Pentagon hired the man who builds rockets and robots to help figure out what comes next. Makes sense. Who better to design tomorrow’s battlefield than the guy who already launched a car into space.
Hegseth said the work will be “focused on discovering, developing and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes.” Ambitious. Most government programs can barely field the paperwork our grandparents needed. According to Elon Musk Pentagon Project Meridian, Musk’s involvement comes after he and Trump publicly reconciled following what the president diplomatically described as a rough patch.
Trump And Musk: Together Again, Awkwardly Enough
The reunion story here is almost as entertaining as the policy. Musk previously led the Department of Government Efficiency before leaving the White House and falling out with President Trump in what political observers are calling a “bad spell,” because that is literally how Trump described it. “He had a bad spell, he had a bad period, he had a bad moment,” Trump said. “But I like Elon, and I suspect I’ll always like him.”
The two were later spotted sitting next to each other at a memorial service for Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk, which is apparently where Washington power couples reconcile these days. The bromance was fully back on display this week when Trump, at an event launching America.gov, publicly thanked Musk as “the man who initially envisioned the transformation of government through technology and brought us the talent to get the job done.”
Musk and other top tech executives also visited the White House Tuesday to discuss artificial intelligence, after which Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace the phrase “Artificial Intelligence” with “Super Intelligence.” Because if you rename a thing, the thing gets better. Washington has always believed this.
Project Meridian will now move forward with Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich steering the Pentagon’s vision for tomorrow’s wars. Whether that future involves hypersonic missiles and autonomous drones or just a very long executive order renaming them, America’s adversaries should probably be paying attention. For once, the government hired people who actually build things.
