By Andreas Rogal with AFP
Published on
Tech billionaire Elon Musk will return to officially advise US President Donald Trump’s administration by co-leading what the Pentagon has called a study on the future of war.
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Musk served as head of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), where he oversaw sweeping job cuts across the U.S. federal government, before leaving in May 2025.
In a speech Wednesday at the Quantico military base, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said “Project Meridian” would be “an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of war.” “We exploit a unique source of American advantage that our adversaries do not possess: our innovators, our senior leaders and our technologists,” he added.
Musk will co-lead the Meridian project alongside Palmer Luckey, the 34-year-old co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries, and Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
The Pentagon is no stranger
Musk’s companies are already major Pentagon contractors, including SpaceX which is building satellite networks for Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile shield project. Its artificial intelligence company xAI signed a deal this year allowing the military to use its Grok chatbot on classified systems.
In 2024, Musk threw his support behind Trump and helped lead his return to the White House, but the men then had a highly publicized outburst over the president’s spending legislation.
The two men have since reconciled and Musk has once again become a frequent presence at the White House, although less visible than during his previous stint, when he often visited the Oval Office, notably with his young son on his shoulders.
On Tuesday, he sat next to Trump at a lunch with artificial intelligence officials, where he joined other tech leaders in signing a voluntary agreement on AI safety that the president described as “morally binding.”
Last week, Musk attended the state dinner Trump hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and in May he flew to Beijing aboard Air Force One as part of the trade delegation accompanying Trump on his state visit to China.
Back among the big donors
He also began giving to Republican causes again, including making multimillion-dollar donations to individual candidates and conservative political groups. Musk, who has spent more than $250 million supporting Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election, has donated at least $90 million to the November midterm elections, according to tallies filed by the Federal Election Commission.
Hegseth said the goal of the project is to “look creatively into the future and identify the areas we need to conquer and the capabilities we need to master.” Project members will include hand-picked private sector leaders and subject matter experts from the innovation, academic and policy ecosystems. Hegseth said he ordered the Meridian Project findings to be completed and submitted within 120 days.
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