Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a 120-day Pentagon study of future warfare on September 30, 2026. Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich will co-lead it. Hegseth spoke in a "State of the Force" address at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and the Pentagon's chief technology officer, will oversee the study, which is called Project Meridian.
Musk runs SpaceX and Tesla. Luckey founded Anduril Industries, a defense technology company. Both firms already hold Pentagon contracts in fields the study is meant to examine. This article answers one question: do the co-leads have a commercial stake in the study's possible recommendations? On the public record, their products overlap with the study's scope. The material reviewed does not show any safeguard against that overlap.
What Project Meridian is asked to do
According to the Pentagon memo, the study will "study the battlefields of the future, identify which weapons and technologies warfighters will need to harness to dominate in these environments, and propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing and fielding these capabilities."
Its stated scope covers artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology. It also covers warfare in underground environments and the Earth-Moon region. Hegseth described the goal as "absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield."
The deliverables are an unclassified public report and a separate classified annex. Both are due by late January 2027, followed by what the Pentagon calls a full public rollout.
The three co-leads are not described as outside advisers on the sidelines. They lead the study, and none of them has served in the US military. Hegseth presented the outside role as a corrective: "We should have the humility to recognize that the best forecasters of future conflict do not solely reside within the Pentagon. There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them."
The memo's wording goes beyond forecasting. A study that proposes what to develop, test and field is, in practice, a study that proposes what to buy.
Observers are reading: the contract-by-contract overlap between the co-leads' companies and Meridian's mandate, and how AUTOWARCOM could carry the study's findings into procurement.
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What the record shows
On the available record, the answer to the question is yes in terms of exposure. Two of the three co-leads run companies that hold Pentagon contracts in areas the study covers. Those companies sell the kinds of systems the study is asked to prioritise.
That does not show the study will be skewed. No finding exists yet, and the report is not due until late January 2027. Nor has anyone alleged misconduct. What the record shows is an arrangement in which the people who help set the questions also sell in the markets those questions open.
Whether that matters will depend on terms not yet public: disclosure, recusal and who reviews the classified annex. Until the Pentagon states them, the report's independence rests on trust rather than on a visible rule.
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