Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey will advise the government on the future of warfare

The US Department of Defense announced a new initiative that it says will identify the technological needs for future wars. According to the commissioning note from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Project Meridian "will study the battlefields of the future, identify which weapons and technologies warfighters will need to harness to dominate in these environments, and propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing and fielding these capabilities such that America will have overmatch for the 21st century and beyond."

The endeavor will be led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich. As CNBC reported, nobody in this trio has served in the US military. However, Musk's SpaceXAI and Luckey's Anduril both have existing business contracts with the Pentagon, with deals worth as much as $4.16 billion. Gingrich has no obvious ties to the tech sector, but has worked adjacent to the military on several projects and last year was awarded an honorary doctorate from Air University.

Considering that just in this calendar year, the Defense Department has already leaked classified war plans to a journalist in a Signal chat, narrowly avoided an international incident after allegedly relying on an AI-generated report, and illegally designated Anthropic a supply chain risk after the company refused to remove guardrails on its AI models, it seems like the military could benefit from some guidance. But a cynic might think that Project Meridian sounds less like a source of guidance and more like a way to give yet more power and money to friends of the current administration.