Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
Appears in 3 stories
Chairs Project Meridian
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth placed the Pentagon's long-term weapons strategy in the hands of three people, two of them major defense contractors. Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich will co-lead Project Meridian, a 120-day study meant to identify the technologies America needs for wars decades away.
Updated Oct 1
Leading technical negotiations with AI companies
Anthropic's Claude became the first commercial AI model on classified U.S. military networks in late 2024. In March 2026, the Defense Department labeled the company a 'supply chain risk'—a tag once reserved for foreign adversaries—for refusing to allow mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons.
Updated Sep 26
Leading technical implementation of drone programs
The Pentagon spent $398 million on small drones in 2022. Four years later, as Ukraine demonstrated that $400 drones could destroy $10 million tanks, Congress authorized $1.7 billion—a fourfold increase. Now the Department of Defense has launched its most ambitious small-drone initiative ever: a $1.1 billion program to field more than 300,000 one-way attack drones by 2028, with the first 30,000 expected by mid-2026.
Updated May 26
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