Tech billionaire Elon Musk will make a return to officially advising US President Donald Trump’s government by co-leading what the Pentagon called a study on the future of war.
Musk served as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he spearheaded sweeping job cuts across the US federal government, before departing in May 2025.
On Tuesday he was seated next to Trump at a lunch with artificial intelligence executives, where he joined other tech leaders in signing a voluntary AI safety accord that the president described as “morally binding. Last week, Musk attended the state dinner Trump hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and in May he flew to Beijing on Air Force One as part of the business delegation accompanying Trump on his state visit to China. Musk served as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he spearheaded sweeping job cuts across the US federal government, before departing in May 2025. In 2024, Musk threw his support behind Trump and helped his return to the White House, but the men later had a high-profile blow-up over the president’s spending legislation.
In a speech Wednesday at the Quantico military base, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said “Project Meridian” will be “an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare. “We are leveraging a unique source of American advantage, one our adversaries do not have: our innovators, our senior leaders and our technologists,” Hegseth said.
