The world’s wealthiest man has just been appointed to a Pentagon commission that will help decide what the future of warfare looks like. Elon Musk, alongside Anduril Industries co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, is to lead “Project Meridian”. It follows a strategy by this White House that moves government and the tech sector ever closer.
Project Meridian goes much further than the influence of defence contractors in Washington. It marks the beginning of Silicon Valley arriving at the halls of power, where the future of warfare itself is being imagined.
The post-war years have been marked by an ever-closer relationship between American defence contractors and the government. This was exactly the convergence president Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 farewell address.