# Project Meridian **Project Meridian: The Future of Warfare** is a **120-day Pentagon study**, commissioned by a memo [[Pete Hegseth]] signed on **September 30, 2026** and announced the same day at his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico (see [[Hegseth State of the Force Address 2026]]). Its three co-directors are [[Elon Musk]], [[Palmer Luckey]] and [[Newt Gingrich]] — none of whom has served in the U.S. military — working under [[Emil Michael]], the department's chief technology officer, who was directed to commission the study. A wider panel drawn from industry, academia, government and the policy world supports them. The study is explicitly **not** chartered to write strategy or policy. Its assignment is to name the domains the United States must be able to win and the capabilities it must master to do so — a mandate the announcement described as running from under the Earth to beyond the moon — and then to recommend how those systems get discovered, developed and fielded. Hegseth named artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields he expects to change the character of war. The output is to be an **unclassified public report with a classified annex**, due to the Secretary's office at the end of the 120 days. ## Why this matters for the KB Meridian is the clearest case yet of the [[Revolving Door]] run in reverse: rather than officials leaving for industry, two sitting defense-industry principals were placed at the front of a government study whose recommendations shape what the Pentagon buys. [[SpaceX]] holds billions of dollars in active defense contracts; [[Anduril]], which Luckey co-founded, builds military drones. Both sell the categories — autonomous systems, space assets — that a study of future warfare is most likely to favor over legacy platforms. **The employment-status question is the structural finding.** The Pentagon has declined to say whether Musk and Luckey hold the status of [[Special Government Employee]] or are contractors, and that distinction decides which rules bind them: an executive-branch employee files a financial disclosure and is subject to the federal criminal conflict-of-interest statute, while an outside contractor or uncompensated adviser may be subject to neither. By leaving the status unstated, the department has seated three men with direct commercial exposure at a purchasing-relevant study without creating any public record of what they own or what they must recuse from. The department also did not respond to questions about conflicts of interest; SpaceX and Anduril did not respond to requests for comment. > [!warning] Sourcing note — the MITRE safeguard > A Defense Department spokesperson told NPR that **[[MITRE]] "is responsible for the analysis and recommendations"** and will apply "appropriate conflict-of-interest and information safeguards." That is the department's only published safeguard, and as of 2026-10-13 it is **single-source** — NPR's October 6 report (carried by KPBS and OPB). Trade explainers reconstructing the memo describe the commissioning as routed through an unnamed partner organization. Treat MITRE's role as reported rather than confirmed until a second independent outlet or a primary document names it. ## Reaction - **Richard Painter**, the George W. Bush White House's chief ethics lawyer, on the co-directors: "They all want to sell stuff." - A former senior Defense Department official called the arrangement "a massive conflict of interest," on the specific ground that the study could recommend drones and space assets — what SpaceX and Anduril build — over platforms like tanks. - A senior Government Accountability Office official questioned why a new task force was needed at all given existing Pentagon work on the same questions. - Hegseth himself acknowledged the "obvious biases and risks" in the Pentagon posing and answering its own questions, arguing the best forecasters of future conflict are not all inside the building. ## See Also - [[Elon Musk]] · [[Palmer Luckey]] · [[Newt Gingrich]] — the three co-directors - [[Emil Michael]] — the chief technology officer who commissioned it - [[Pete Hegseth]] — signed the September 30, 2026 memo - [[Hegseth State of the Force Address 2026]] — the Quantico speech that announced it - [[MITRE]] — named by the Pentagon as responsible for the analysis - [[SpaceX]] · [[Anduril]] — the co-directors' defense contractors - [[Special Government Employee]] — the unresolved status question - [[Defense Innovation Board]] · [[National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence]] — earlier Pentagon panels on the same industry-advisory pattern