Pentagon Sued Over Hegseth’s New “Future of Warfare” Committee Led by Musk

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth broke the law in establishing an advisory committee, co-led by Elon Musk, to guide the “future of warfare,” a new lawsuit says, citing “major conflict of interest concerns.”

The lawsuit, filed by watchdogs Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Public Citizen, and Project on Government Oversight (POGO), says that the Pentagon did not go through the proper requirements under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in the creation of “Project Meridian: The Future of Warfare.” This means that the committee is not subject to public disclosures or scrutiny as it should be, the suit says, and is operating illegally, having had two meetings already.

The lawsuit also alleges that Department of Defense leaders failed to ensure there is a proper balance of expertise and viewpoints on the committee, which is being led by Musk, Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey and former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. This has led to “enormous” conflict of interest concerns regarding the group’s makeup, CREW’s president noted.

Pentagon officials “have failed to comply with FACA’s procedural and substantive requirements for new federal advisory committees, including FACA transparency requirements that disallow Project Meridian’s closed-door operations,” the lawsuit says. “Compounding the problem, Project Meridian’s private-sector membership raises precisely the type of conflict-of-interest concerns that FACA was designed to address.”

“As a FACA committee, Project Meridian cannot lawfully provide critical military advice to DoD without public participation and balanced membership to counteract the self-interest and biases of its private-sector members,” it goes on.

The lawsuit comes as Hegseth is slated to be under the microscope if Democrats win Congress, with top House Democrats hinting that impeachment of Hegseth will be their top priority.

Hegseth directed that the Pentagon form the committee in a memo dated September 30. “Project Meridian will study the battlefields of the future, identify which weapons and technologies warfighters will need to harness to dominate in these environments, and propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing and fielding these capabilities,” it says. The memo also says that the “Joint Staff and all services” should transfer its research and plans to the group.

Anduril and Musk’s SpaceX have been awarded with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of federal contracts, including from the Department of Defense, in Trump’s second term. Musk was also under scrutiny recently for seemingly unilaterally deciding to harm Ukraine’s military efforts against Russia by throttling their internet service, which is provided by SpaceX’s Starlink.

“The Federal Advisory Committee Act sets clear requirements about transparency and avoiding conflicts of interest, and Project Meridian must either comply or stop operating,” said Donald K. Sherman, CREW’s president, in a statement.

Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman raised concerns that Musk and Luckey would work to entrench Big Tech’s interests into military operations, pointing out that FACA was written to prevent such strong influence in government committees.

“Project Meridian would outsource design of grand military strategy to two extremist Pentagon contractors, Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey,” said Weissman. “Very predictably, they will recommend more spending, much more spending, on more AI-enabled weaponry. That would simultaneously make the world more dangerous and starve funding for domestic and human needs.”