By Tom Hicks | October 2, 2026
Pete Hegseth thinks the Pentagon has a problem, and on this particular point he’s probably right. The people inside a massive bureaucracy can become very good at asking one another the same questions and arriving at variations of the same answers. When Hegseth announced Project Meridian Wednesday, he acknowledged exactly that problem: “There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them.” The new 120-day project is supposed to break that cycle by bringing outsiders into the room to help imagine what warfare might look like years or even decades from now. Pentagon
That’s a pretty reasonable idea.
Then you look at the outsiders.
Hegseth chose Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to co-lead the effort. Musk runs SpaceX, which already does billions of dollars of national-security business with the federal government. Luckey founded Anduril Industries, a defense technology company specializing in many of the things Project Meridian is supposed to study, including artificial intelligence, drones and autonomous systems. Gingrich brings decades of government and national-security experience, although exactly what qualifies a former House speaker to co-lead a technological review of warfare several decades into the future is a fair question. Pentagon
And that’s where Hegseth’s solution to one kind of bias runs directly into the possibility of another. Two of the people helping the Pentagon think about what weapons and technologies America will need in the future lead companies that could potentially sell the Pentagon some of those weapons and technologies.
That doesn’t prove corruption. It doesn’t prove anybody is steering a contract toward himself, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
It does, however, demand one hell of an explanation.
THIS ISN’T A PENTAGON BOOK CLUB
Project Meridian sounds almost whimsical when you first hear some of the territory Hegseth wants it to explore. Underground warfare. Artificial intelligence. Robotics. Biotechnology. Directed energy. New domains stretching all the way to the “cislunar frontier,” the enormous region of space between Earth and the Moon. If the United States military intends to remain relevant twenty or thirty years from now, somebody damn well ought to be thinking about those things. Pentagon
But Meridian isn’t being assembled to sit around a conference table and write science fiction. The project has 120 days to produce findings and propose “actionable solutions” for developing, testing and fielding advanced technology. That takes it out of the realm of futurist speculation and puts it much closer to decisions that eventually become programs, budgets and contracts. TechCrunch
And that word fielding is doing a lot of work. Somebody eventually has to build what gets fielded.
Somebody eventually gets paid.
FOLLOW THE MONEY THAT’S ALREADY THERE
The relationship between these companies and the Pentagon isn’t theoretical. In July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX two task orders totaling $1.6 billion for 18 Falcon 9 launches supporting space-based sensing and targeting capabilities. All 18 launches are expected to be completed by the end of 2027. U.S. Space Force
Luckey’s Anduril is hardly standing outside the Pentagon with a brochure hoping somebody will call. In March, the Army announced a 10-year enterprise contract with the company carrying a potential value of up to $20 billion. The Army said the government had previously managed more than 120 separate procurement actions involving Anduril’s commercial technology before consolidating them under the new framework. That $20 billion is a ceiling rather than money already obligated, an important distinction, but it tells you the scale of the relationship we’re talking about. U.S. Army
That’s what makes this different from inviting a couple of successful technology executives to give the Pentagon a fresh set of eyes. SpaceX and Anduril are already major players in the defense ecosystem, and the technologies Meridian will examine overlap substantially with businesses in which those companies already operate.
Now the Pentagon has invited their leaders to help think about what comes next.
SO WHAT ARE THE RULES?
This is the question I haven’t seen adequately answered.
What safeguards govern Musk and Luckey’s participation in Project Meridian?
Federal ethics law isn’t as simple as saying anybody who advises the government automatically becomes a federal employee subject to every conflict-of-interest rule. The requirements can depend on how someone is appointed and the capacity in which that person serves. Special government employees are subject to federal ethics provisions that can restrict participation in matters affecting their financial interests. U.S. Office of Government Ethics
As of Thursday evening, the Pentagon’s public announcement doesn’t spell out specific recusal arrangements or an independent ethics process for Meridian’s leaders. Reporting on the project has raised the same unanswered issue, and when TechCrunch asked the Pentagon for more information about Meridian, the department referred the publication back to its release and said it had nothing further to provide beyond Hegseth’s comments. TechCrunch
So which rules apply here?
Will Musk and Luckey file financial disclosures? Will there be recusals? Will they participate in recommendations involving technologies their companies currently sell? Could SpaceX or Anduril later compete for contracts connected to priorities Meridian helps identify?
Maybe the Pentagon has perfectly good answers to every one of those questions.
Then give them to us.
Because those are exactly the questions government should answer before putting major defense contractors at a table where the future requirements of the American military are being discussed.
HEGSETH DIAGNOSED THE RIGHT DISEASE
That’s what makes this more interesting than another story about Elon Musk wandering back into Washington.
Hegseth’s original diagnosis makes sense. The Pentagon has been criticized for years over slow procurement and an acquisition system that can move at government speed while technological development moves considerably faster. Bringing outsiders into that system can challenge assumptions that have survived mostly because everyone inside the building has gotten used to them.
Bring in engineers. Bring in entrepreneurs. Bring in people willing to tell generals that something they’ve believed for thirty years no longer makes sense.
But if the problem is institutional bias, replacing it with the possibility of financial self-interest isn’t much of an improvement.
That’s why the safeguards matter. Expertise and financial interest can exist in the same person. Washington deals with that problem constantly. The answer is clear rules, disclosure, and recusals when someone’s government responsibilities collide with private interests.
Without those protections, Hegseth’s own criticism comes back around on Project Meridian.
The Pentagon shouldn’t be asking itself both the questions and the answers.
A Pentagon contractor shouldn’t get to help write the question and then someday sell the answer without the public knowing what rules stand between those two roles.
THIS GETS BIGGER THAN MERIDIAN
Hegseth didn’t announce Project Meridian in isolation. During the same State of the Force address, he announced plans for a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command, or AUTOWARCOM, intended to accelerate autonomous and robotic capabilities across the military. The proposal still requires congressional approval, with the Pentagon aiming to establish the command by October 1, 2027. The War Zone
That matters because autonomous systems and artificial intelligence aren’t peripheral interests for Anduril. They’re central to what the company does. SpaceX occupies an equally important position in military space and launch operations at a moment when the Pentagon is thinking far beyond traditional battlefields.
Put the announcements together, and the stakes become clearer. The Pentagon isn’t merely holding an intellectual exercise about warfare in 2050. It’s simultaneously trying to reorganize parts of today’s military around technologies in which some of Meridian’s leaders already have substantial business interests.
Again, that doesn’t mean a contract has been rigged.
It means the ethics question isn’t academic.
THE QUESTION ISN’T WHETHER THEY’RE SMART ENOUGH
Musk knows rockets, satellites, and engineering. Luckey helped build one of the most important new defense companies in America. Gingrich has spent decades involved in national-security policy and previously served on the Defense Policy Board. You can make a perfectly reasonable case for wanting people with those backgrounds in the room when the Pentagon starts challenging its assumptions about future warfare. Project Meridian background
In fact, that’s exactly why the Pentagon should establish the rules before the work begins.
Project Meridian will spend the next 120 days thinking about wars American troops may someday have to fight. Its recommendations could help shape where military research, attention and eventually enormous amounts of taxpayer money go.
The public doesn’t need a promise that Musk and Luckey are good guys who would never abuse their positions. It doesn’t need a promise that they’re bad guys who inevitably will.
It needs something considerably less dramatic and considerably more useful.
Show us the rules.
Tell us whether financial disclosures are required. Tell us when recusals apply. Tell us whether SpaceX and Anduril can pursue work that grows out of Meridian recommendations. Tell us who decides when a recommendation crosses the line between independent advice and a business opportunity.
Hegseth says the Pentagon needs outsiders because the institution shouldn’t be allowed to ask and answer all of its own questions.
Fine.
Before those outsiders start helping write America’s military shopping list, somebody should tell us whether they’re allowed to own the store.
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THE BULLSHIT DETECTOR
CLAIM 1
Jack Smith was at an Atlanta Hawks game in Atlanta while Fani Willis was prosecuting Donald Trump.
BULLSHIT: 💩💩💩💩💩
WHY: Sen. Eric Schmitt tried to spring this one on former special counsel Jack Smith during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, suggesting Smith might have committed perjury when he denied attending an Atlanta Hawks game. The problem was spectacularly simple: Smith had attended a basketball game that day, but it was the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s team playing Maryland in College Park, Maryland. Schmitt had conflated the Hawkeyes with the Hawks and turned a college basketball game in Maryland into a possible secret trip to Atlanta. That’s not a minor geographical error. That’s bullshit with frequent-flyer miles. PBS NewsHour C-SPAN hearing video
CLAIM 2
A video circulating this week shows a large group of Muslims chanting in the streets of Dublin in September 2026.
BULLSHIT: 💩💩💩💩💩
WHY: Dublin is real. The crowd is real. Pretty much everything else attached to the viral claim is bullshit. The footage dates to October 11, 2025, and shows supporters of German soccer club FC Schalke 04 marching on Abbey Street before a match in Dublin. The clip was recycled this week as something that had supposedly “just happened,” with the crowd falsely identified as Muslims. Somebody took year-old footage of German soccer supporters, changed who they were and when it happened, and sent it back into circulation as evidence of something entirely different. Lead Stories
CLAIM 3
The Justice Department is investigating seven Minnesota federal judges.
BULLSHIT: 💩💩
WHY: This one has enough truth underneath it to make the wording matter. The Justice Department did file a judicial misconduct complaint involving seven Minnesota federal judges after they spoke to The New York Times about the administration’s immigration enforcement surge. DOJ also asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to initiate an investigation. What DOJ is not doing is conducting that investigation itself. In this process, DOJ is the complainant and the judiciary decides what happens next. Turning “DOJ asked the court to investigate” into “DOJ is investigating the judges” changes who holds the investigative power. That’s misleading rather than invented from whole cloth, which is why this earns two piles instead of five. U.S. Department of Justice Crosscheck
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ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO
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