Episode Details

Pete Hegseth just put Elon Musk in charge of planning America’s future wars, then launched a brand new four-star command to buy the robots to fight them. The Secretary of Defense rolled it all out Wednesday at Quantico in a speech he called the State of the Force, which sounds like a Star Wars sequel that went straight to streaming.

It’s called Project Meridian. Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich get 120 days to map out the future of war:

“from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier.”

Cislunar means between here and the moon. Great, the guy who texted strike plans into a group chat with a journalist in it is now planning the moon war.

Hegseth even explained why he needed outsiders. His words:

“There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them.”

Solid point, Pete. So he fixed the bias problem by asking two guys who sell weapons to the Pentagon. Musk’s SpaceX holds billions in Pentagon contracts. Luckey’s Anduril builds autonomous weapons. It’s like asking the Ford dealer whether you need a new truck. And Gingrich is there because somebody had to represent the nineties.

Then there’s the robot part. Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom, which sounds like a car wash that’s legally allowed to kill you. It’s built to scale robotic weapons across the entire military, and Hegseth called it “the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.” My dude, we’re in month eight of a war with Iran. You don’t get to call it peacetime because you got bored.

So connect the dots. Musk and Luckey tell the Pentagon what the future needs, and the new robot command buys it. A sales pitch with a security clearance.

I served in Iraq. Here’s what I know about soldiers. We can refuse an unlawful order. We can blow the whistle. We can testify. A drone can’t do any of that. And look at what else Hegseth bragged about. He’s cutting 20 percent of general and admiral jobs, and he said the ones who “seemed to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion” no longer work there. Reporters covering the Iran war? “Anti-American losers” committing “treason.”

For the humans he keeps, the new standards are, his words:

“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”

Then he added:

“The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top,”

which sounds like a Yelp review for a gym bathroom. Then he handed the crowd a 144-page field manual of his own speeches. The man turned himself into merch.

And because billionaires and killer robots weren’t enough, he opened an Office of Religious Affairs. As The Fucking News pointed out, the order literally says, “I am establishing the Office of Religious Affairs.” The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law “respecting an establishment of religion.” He didn’t even reach for a thesaurus.

So that’s the military he’s building. Fewer generals who might question him, a press he calls traitors, God with a desk in the building, and weapons designed by the men who profit from them. Fewer people who can say no. More machines that can’t.

Sources:https://www.npr.org/2026/09/30/nx-s1-5986304/hegseth-troops-address

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/30/musk-luckey-gingrich-pentagon-hegseth-.html

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/6121108-pete-hegseth-pentagon-project-meridian-warfare-future/