Donald Trump does not rule out government shareholdings in OpenAi and Anthropic, the two leading US artificial intelligence giants, following the example of what was done with Intel. In an interview with Time, the full transcript of which has been released, the American president said that “I could, maybe I could do it. I have many agreements of this type, I do it”.
Trump entrusts Musk with planning the war of the future
Code name ‘Project Meridian’, or the study of the war of the future. Pete Hegseth unveils the Pentagon’s new initiative and entrusts its leadership to Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich, aiming to anticipate future operational scenarios and develop all the tools necessary to guarantee US military supremacy. The owner of SpaceX and Tesla, as well as the richest man on the planet, therefore returns to work with Donald Trump’s administration after his 2025 experience at the top of the ambitious Department for Government Efficiency (Doge), which ended with a sensational rupture, slowly mended. Musk will be supported by Luckey, head of the defense technology company Anduril, and by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, and will have to, making use of the contribution of hi-tech and national security experts, propose the first solutions within 120 days. Project Meridian aims to examine how the US military can use new technologies and wage war in uncharted terrain, including the Moon, the Defense Department said. “We are seeing rapid advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, biotechnology, among other critical areas of high technology,” Hegseth noted. Russia’s war against Ukraine, first, and that of the USA and Israel against Iran, then, made it clear that the way of military power, understood as the traditional possession of hardware (missiles, tanks, ships and fighters), is no longer enough if a drone costing a few thousand dollars can cause much more serious damage. Together, “these new domains, ways of fighting and technological developments will profoundly change the nature of warfare,” added the Pentagon chief, announcing the project.
«To maintain global dominance, the United States must anticipate future operating environments», with a «deliberately future-oriented posture. We must have the humility to recognize that the best analysts of future conflicts are not found exclusively within the Pentagon: there are obvious prejudices and risks in trying to ask ourselves the questions and, at the same time, give us the answers”, he further observed. Hegseth said that Musk, Luckey and Gingrich, under the leadership of Emil Michael, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, “will focus on identifying, developing and operationally employing weapons and systems that our children and grandchildren will need throughout their lives – all without creative limitations or constraints, for any future battlefield, from beneath the Earth to beyond the Moon”: because the American military “must not take current advantages for granted”. For this reason, the Joint Staff and all armed forces must also be ready to link their research initiatives and future warfare projects to Project Meridian.