On Wednesday, during a "State of the Force" address, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced something that sounded more like a science-fiction pitch than a government memo: a four-month sprint to imagine how wars will be fought once today's emerging technologies mature. The effort, called Project Meridian, will be co-led by three men who rarely appear on the same roster — Elon Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Working alongside academics and policy experts, and reporting to Pentagon CTO Emil Michael, they have been asked to study "the battlefields of the future" and recommend weapons the United States should start building now. The timeline is tight by government standards. Hegseth has given the team just 120 days to deliver "actionable solutions" for developing, testing, and deploying advanced military technology. Alongside the project, he also unveiled an Autonomous Warfare Command, intended to accelerate how quickly drones and self-operating systems move from laboratories onto actual battlefields, from Eastern Europe to the Pacific.

Neither appointment is accidental. Musk's SpaceX already launches satellites for the government and runs a network supporting national security missions, while Luckey's Anduril has recently won contracts for long-range missiles, semi-autonomous fighter aircraft, and Army intelligence hardware. For Musk, this also marks a quiet re-entry into Washington's orbit after stepping away from the Department of Government Efficiency last year, following a reported lunch with the president and other AI leaders. Yet one detail remains unexplained: the Pentagon says the study will be run through an unnamed "partner organization," without disclosing who leads it.