Experts Question Contractors Leading Pentagon War Study as Trump Visits Anduril

A new Pentagon study meant to chart the future of warfare is drawing criticism from ethics experts because two of its leaders run companies that sell the very technologies it will evaluate.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian on Sept. 30 as a study of automated and AI-powered weaponry. Along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, its leaders include Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey, a co-founder of the defense technology company Anduril Industries, NPR reported. The work is expected to take about 120 days. In his announcement, Hegseth said rapid advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology will profoundly change the character of warfare and that the United States must act decisively to stay dominant.

Both companies are major Pentagon suppliers. SpaceX has won more than $8 billion in defense contracts this year, according to government contract announcements cited by NPR, including work on Starshield, a military satellite communications network, and its Grok chatbot is in use at the Pentagon. Anduril builds drones for use on land, at sea and in the air.

That overlap worries ethics experts. Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told NPR that any recommendations from contractors who want to sell AI to the military cannot be treated as neutral public service. A former senior Defense Department official, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, called the arrangement a massive conflict of interest, noting that the study could steer future purchases toward drones and space systems, which the two men’s companies build, and away from equipment like tanks, which they do not.

The Pentagon says the analysis itself will be done by the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit that manages federally funded research, under a commission from Emil Michael, the department’s chief technology officer. Supporters of working closely with these firms argue that they move faster than traditional contractors; acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has described the service’s partnership with Anduril as a way to break through bureaucratic red tape.

The questions come as President Trump is set to visit Anduril’s site at Sparrows Point near Baltimore on Tuesday. Details released for the event describe a planned $6.6 billion shipbuilding plant, to be called Arsenal Two, financed with about $2.9 billion from the Navy and $3.7 billion in private money, that would build torpedo tubes and sections of Virginia-class attack submarines, the Guardian reported. The company has said it will not produce ship parts until 2030 and has no known record in building crewed submarines.

Luckey is also a prominent Republican fundraiser who has given about $5.9 million to Republican causes since 2017, according to the Guardian, and Anduril received its first funding from the investor Peter Thiel. The Pentagon has released few details about the scope of Project Meridian beyond a one-page memo.