\n<\/p>\n
In his \u201cstate<\/span> of the force\u201d address last week, self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth coupled his usual attacks on the press, the Ivy League, and \u201cbeardos\u201d and \u201cweirdos\u201d with new initiatives that have the potential to reshape the U.S. military for decades: an Autonomous Warfare Command, and an effort to map out the future of warfare called \u201cProject Meridian.\u201d The former, a combatant command devoted to AI-enabled robotic warfare, will have purchasing powers specifically designed to thwart effective oversight. The latter puts defense contractors, tech titans, and weapons merchants in charge of planning the military\u2019s future \u2014 producing innumerable conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n The Pentagon has revealed few details about the command or the commission beyond barebones descriptions and Hegseth memorandums. The four-paragraph document that authorizes Project Meridian<\/a>, for example, says little beyond a decree that the U.S. must \u201cdominate\u201d in \u201cnew domains, new ways of fighting\u201d centered on \u201cartificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, [and] biotechnology, among other critical high-tech areas.\u201d<\/p>\n While billed as efforts to promote blue-sky thinking and catapult the Pentagon into the future, former defense officials as well as experts on government contracting say both initiatives are ripe for out-of-control spending as well as waste, fraud, and abuse. <\/p>\n One former official asked how Hegseth\u2019s Pentagon would \u201cplan for future wars when they didn\u2019t plan for the current one,\u201d referencing the failed war with Iran. A second former official foresaw tough sailing for both of Hegseth\u2019s efforts due to institutional intransigence, inertia, and roadblocks that even Hegseth\u2019s repeated purges of top brass would not help overcome.<\/p>\n AUTOWARCOM will be \u201ca new four-star combatant command \u2026 built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force,\u201d Hegseth said in a wide-ranging speech rife with Pentagon jargon and juvenile insults. The new command is scheduled to be formally established by October 1, 2027, according to a memo<\/a> released following Hegseth\u2019s speech at Marine Base Quantico, Virginia.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pace of war is changing faster than the processes to support it.\u00a0Cheap computing, Super Intelligence, and advanced commercial manufacturing have enabled the proliferation of low-cost, high precision strike,\u201d Hegseth explained, using President Donald Trump\u2019s preferred and incorrect term<\/a> for artificial intelligence before offering up a thunderstorm analogy. \u201cWe need bolts of lightning \u2026 our existing high-end kill chains,\u201d he said, emphasizing the need for traditional and expensive weapons systems, like the Tomahawk missiles that leveled<\/a> an elementary school<\/a> in Minab, Iran. \u201cWe also need steady wind and rain: mass drones and other autonomous attritable systems that flip the cost exchange and impose unrelenting pressure on an adversary on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n A money pit in the making, according to the first former Pentagon official, AUTOWARCOM will \u2014 according to Hegseth \u2014 possess \u201cdirected manpower, budget, acquisition authorities and create dedicated military career pathways for Officers and Enlisted personnel.\u201d Hegseth suggested weapons would be tested on battlefields whenever feasible. That former official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity due to his current employment, said to \u201cexpect a fiasco financially.\u201d<\/p>\n This was echoed by Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense. \u201cBy Secretary Hegseth\u2019s own admission, the purpose of this combatant command is to cut out the oversight that autonomous systems so desperately need by deploying untested autonomous weapons in combat,\u201d he told The Intercept. \u201cThat approach promises to waste a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars while also endangering service members and threatening the missions they\u2019re tasked with carrying out.\u201d<\/p>\n Hegseth\u2019s push for a command devoted to autonomous weapons comes amid a furious debate over safeguards for AI<\/a>. The tech sector has been roiled by recent revelations that AI agents went rogue, circumvented controls\u00a0and began colluding in secret<\/a>; inserted \u201cjailbreak-like instructions<\/a>\u201d into their own notes to free the models from human-imposed constraints; hacked<\/a> or took aim at government websites, networks<\/a> and databases<\/a> around the world<\/a>; and almost instigated a confrontation<\/a> between the U.S. and China, both nuclear-armed powers. Questions also continue to mount over the AI-enabled Maven Smart System, built by Palantir and used by the military<\/a> for targeting in Iran, that paved the way for the Minab strike<\/a> that killed more than 150 people, most of them children<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hegseth said he anticipated internal resistance within the military to the creation of AUTOWARCOM. Both former defense officials agreed it was a certainty.<\/p>\n Hegseth said that Owen West, who led the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Innovation Unit, and Max Strasiser, a Navy SEAL senior chief and a test pilot, will run the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS) \u201cunder a unique CEO-COO partnership.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Their \u201cculminating mission\u201d will, said Hegseth, \u201ctake place over the course of months, clearing the path for Autonomous Warfare Command.\u201d\u00a0This will be conducted under a new moniker, Project Agincourt, a nod to a 1415 battle in which outnumbered English forces used longbows to defeat a larger French army, offered no quarter for a time during combat, and then massacred prisoners<\/a>. (Hegseth has also advocated for offering no quarter<\/a> to enemies, now a war crime.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Project Agincourt will set up AUTOWARCOM while it simultaneously \u201cprototype[s] a new construct called Warfighting Acquisition.\u201d\u00a0Hegseth laid out a move-fast-and-break-things<\/a> vision for the new command. \u201cThis model fuses operators with entrepreneurs in rapid adaptation cycles, while distributing decisions and dollars closer to frontline units and the combatant commands,\u201d he explained.\u00a0\u201cBy removing unnecessary layers, reducing the distance between our warfighters and our world-leading innovators, and then giving the right people the authority to act \u2014 Project Agincourt will pilot innovation at the edge, in a way that only Americans can do.\u201d<\/p>\n Both former officials said such an arrangement was likely to lead to both contracting fraud<\/a> and technological failures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hegseth also announced the formation of Project Meridian, an effort to study the future of warfare which he claimed would be \u201cco-led by three of our nation\u2019s best minds,\u201d before clarifying that it would instead be run by Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich, and Palmer Luckey<\/a>, the founder of the virtual reality firm Oculus Rift and defense contractor Anduril Industries<\/a>. Assisted by War Department chief technology officer, Emil Michael, the three Trump boosters are tasked with ensuring \u201cAmerica\u2019s long-term military superiority by identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield.\u201d Hegseth said the project would be completed within 120 days, at which time the group would issue a final public report with a classified annex.<\/p>\n A Republican fundraising bundler partial to Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts, Luckey fancies himself a techno-war futurist and believes tomorrow\u2019s conflicts will be fought in a \u201csubterranean domain<\/a>,\u201d with \u201cweapons that move through the crust of the earth<\/a>.\u201d He says that \u201cAnduril has working prototypes of subterranean systems that can deliver a variety of kinetic, electronic, and other effects.\u201d Luckey also envisions the moon as a future battlespace. He said lunar warfare would resemble that of Robert Heinlein\u2019s 1966 science fiction novel \u201cThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,\u201d which includes subterranean combat and an electromagnetic catapult that lobs lunar boulders, with the kinetic force of atomic blasts, at the earth.<\/p>\n Anduril has been cleaning up on Pentagon contracts, inking a deal this year with the Army for commercial information technology potentially worth $20 billion. Anduril is also leading a contractor consortium, including the weapons-tech company Palantir <\/a>\u2014 whose Maven Smart System contributed to the Minab school strike \u2014 helping build Trump\u2019s \u201cGolden Dome\u201d missile defense system, which is predicted to be a trillion-dollar boondoggle<\/a>.<\/p>\n Luckey joins Musk, whose firm SpaceX\u00a0has been awarded billions<\/a> for a key role in the Golden Dome project, as a defense contractor with a clear conflict of interest in mapping out the future of U.S. warfare. Musk, who donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars<\/a> to getting Trump elected in 2024 and is providing at least $100 million<\/a> to help Republican candidates during this election cycle, is returning to government service after flaming out last year as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. A cost-cutting agency that promised to save Americans trillions of dollars by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, DOGE failed to deliver on that promise, wasted <\/a>taxpayer money, repeatedly<\/a> misled the public<\/a> about supposed savings<\/a>, and may have played a role in hundreds of thousands of deaths<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is a genuine need for government reform and modernization, but we saw how Musk\u2019s approach worked out with DOGE,\u201d Murphy told The Intercept. \u201cIt failed spectacularly, creating disruptions, payouts for workers not working, firings and rehiring, and a pittance of the savings taxpayers were promised.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProject Meridian is an unveiled effort to outsource our future military strategies to individuals and companies that stand to profit most from a hypermilitarized future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Luckey and Musk will be joined at the helm of Project Meridian by the 83-year-old Gingrich, who resigned<\/a> as House speaker in 1998 after admitting that he broke<\/a> congressional rules and \u201cbrought down on the people\u2019s house a controversy which could weaken the faith people have in their government.\u201d <\/p>\n Hegseth announced that a meeting between \u201ca small group\u201d was to take place just after his Wednesday speech in a sensitive compartmented information facility at Quantico. Pentagon propaganda photos<\/a> from the first meeting show 11 grim-looking men, including Musk, Gingrich, and Luckey, seated around a table as Hegseth holds forth.<\/p>\n The nonprofit MITRE Corporation, which conducts independent research for federal government agencies, announced that it will be coordinating Project Meridian and named<\/a> 17 current board members beyond the Big Three, including Francis J. \u201cBing\u201d West, a Vietnam War veteran, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1983, and is the father of DRPM-UxS CEO Owen West; Rick Smith, the CEO of Axon<\/a>, the manufacturer of Taser stun guns, which saw nine of 13 members of its ethics advisory board resign<\/a> in 2022 over plans for a\u00a0Taser-equipped drone project (which was then shelved); Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir; and Safra Catz, former CEO of Oracle<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cProject Meridian is an unveiled effort to outsource our future military strategies to individuals and companies that stand to profit most from a hypermilitarized future,\u201d said Murphy. \u201cTheir security solutions will predictably entail vast expenditures of taxpayer resources on unproven military systems that rely on the AI models and software these companies control.\u201d<\/p>\n Hegseth\u2019s office did not respond to questions about Project Meridian and AUTOWARCOM.<\/p>\nI, Robot<\/h2>\n
(Armed) Conflicts of Interest<\/h2>\n
\n