Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced onetime trillionaire Elon Musk, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and right-wing entrepreneur Palmer Luckey as the new heads of “Project Meridian”—a massive upcoming study on the “future of warfare.”
Hegseth made the announcement at his “State of the Force” address on Wednesday afternoon, describing the trio of Trump loyalists as “the best forecasters of future conflict.”
“There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them. So today 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 to tomorrow’s conflicts,” Hegseth said. “And that’s why today … I’m announcing Project Meridian, an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare.”
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Newt Gingrich is still alive?!?
Elon Musk hasn’t drowned in a hot tub?
On all that ketamine it’s a roll of the dice every day.
Didn’t Hegseth just proclaim no weirdos, no beardos & no fatties?
I don’t like who he picked but one thing is for sure…he really needs the help!
They’re going to use Teslas as a global military spy-net. I would be surprised if they aren’t already. Minus the military part. This is just formalizing it.
The single most terrifying thing about this, to me, is how few people seem to know what Palmer Luckey’s company Anduril does. They are building autonomous kill bots.
The fucking “let’s build skynet” guy is being invited to US military leadership and his name is dropped from the headline and mentioned in barely 2% of replies.
Are they just pulling names out of a hat now?
The jokes keep on writing themselves. Man, the onion must really be having a tough time right now.
Hegseth, at 21, getting a rejection letter from his application to The Onion . . . “they’ll regret this, I don’t care what it takes . . .”
It’s just Elon telling the DoW how many more of Elon’s products they need. While he maintains the ability to disable all of them on a whim.
You mean the department of defense. Its gulf of mexico too and lake ontario while we’re at it 🙄 Stop indulging the moron please.
I work in defense. People are calling it the Department of War, and there is historical context for it. It actually strikes me as less Orwellian and more honest about the types of assholes we are.
I agree that Trump can’t singlehandedly rename international bodies of water, but I just don’t give a fuck about the executive renaming parts of the executive branch.
I think you mean you work in war (/s but also not really)
Quit.
But he just said no fatties, weirdos, or wimps.
He didn’t say no ketamine.
Yea but said ketamine addict IS a fatty, weirdo and a wimp.
so glad he admits he needs help
Elon the immigrant? Strange move.
Not too hard to forecast future conflicts when you’re the ones who will initiate them.
Hegseth: “no weirdos”
Not even consistent with his own bullshit.
The end is coming and no one will stop it. It’s so crazy and unbelievable. These monsters have written what they want to do and no one can get rid of them?
Oh gee, what could go wrong putting a foreign born white supremacist technocrat in a lead position of our military with full access to its systems so he can integrate an AI system no one understands or knows how to defend against or extract should we want to do so at some point.
But he saved so much money with DOGE and nothing bad happened there!
/s
Don’t forget this douche
They should have added Palmer Luckey to the headline. Extremely concerning that he has a prominent voice in the future of the US military and access to top level sensitive information.
If people are unfamiliar with him, they should do a brief search. It deepens what a terrible idea this is.
Who’s that douche?
Palmer Luckey. He made his money in the early days of VR. Think he runs a defence contractor now. Apparently he’s a massive arsehole.
Yes he runs Anduril, and is another Thiel wannabe weirdo psychopath billionaire.
I’m so upset I bought a Rift DK2 back in the day
How long before Grok suggests invading South Africa in the name of “liberation” or some other BS
Elon’s the least stupid of the three.
Yeah but it’s such a low bar
He can’t steal the data twice!
The problem is he doesn’t need to anyway. The govt data was all that was missing to integrate into his machine learning and ai systems to craft whatever surveillance, hacking, predictive, repressive, and even murderous systems he wants. They already had public data they collected, they had private data they bought, all that was left was govt data to combine all three. Now they’re on to using it for really really bad things.
I bet if he shoved that up my ass it would be amazing.
Agreed but no need to denigrate foreign-born folks.
I’m not, it’s a security risk, that’s simple logic that doesn’t have to be bigoted in nature. The current administration does use foreign national status to denigrate and abuse others due to their bigotry all the time, as does the Republican Party, so I can understand some reflexive accusations, but do not be mistaken, the US and every nation on earth have enough trouble as it is securing their governments, their secrets, weapons, economies, and people, and all of them have had to be wary of foreign national security threats due to those concerns for all of time. It’s literally encoded into our Constitution and who is allowed to head up the executive branch, via the office of the Presidency, as commander in chief.
Everything is a security risk. My comment wasn’t reflexive. We’ve had plenty of foreign born military folks, including generals. That portion is not why they are threats. It is the wealth hoarding white supremacy.
It’s all of it combined. He was forced out of Canada, or his father was, for their bigoted views and that’s why they fled to SA, and eventually landed here to continue those belief systems and behavioral patterns, that makes them extreme threats based squarely on all the reasons you mentioned AS WELL and inextricably because of their foreign national history. You don’t go all pc to avoid looking like an asshole when valid national security concerns are blinking so red and bright it’s a like a supernova of red flags and lights going off
