Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced onetime trillionaire Elon Musk, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and right-wing entrepreneur Palmer Luckey as the new heads of “Project Meridian”—a massive upcoming study on the “future of warfare.”

Hegseth made the announcement at his “State of the Force” address on Wednesday afternoon, describing the trio of Trump loyalists as “the best forecasters of future conflict.”

“There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them. So today we are leveraging a unique source of American advantage—one our adversaries do not have: our innovators, our senior leaders, and our technologists. Big thinkers and doers who will forecast the creative solution to tomorrow’s conflicts,” Hegseth said. “And that’s why today … I’m announcing Project Meridian, an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare.”

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  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    43 minutes ago

    Best Forecasters of Future Conflict.

    They know future conflict isn’t the war that a foreign nation will come at the military with. The future of warfare is how they will fight the revolutionaries that will inevitably rise against tyranny.

    Musk has the ability to deploy surveillance technology anywhere. The “study” is “how do they continue to keep squeezing the iron fist?”

    Edit: and by anywhere, I mean ANYWHERE. Motherfucker owns a space agency. Tesla cars rely on video processing of always network connected cameras for their driving assist mechanisms. Starlink puts network connectivity anywhere it currently isn’t.

    And GUESS who is part of the PayPal mafia? Palantir. But also Yelp and LinkedIn. Those are much less important than Palantir, but Yelp can at least target businesses that don’t play along, and LinkedIn can harm people seeking employment.

    The dystopia we are in is worse than people can truly grasp.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    2 hours ago

    My own belief is that we almost achieved world-wide peace but then ran out of money. Now we need to crank up the old war machine and start making that sweet, sweet money again! /s

  • farmgineer@nord.pub
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    3 hours ago

    Having had my flu vaccine shot today, I’m just going to assume I’m having a bad reaction and that this is not a real headline.

    Edit: ‘flu’ not ‘flue’; I don’t have a fireplace

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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    3 hours ago

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

    Yeah, that’s how their mind works.

  • MartianRecon@lemmus.org
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    7 hours ago

    And the tankies on here will tell you without any sort of fucking irony that Kamala would be just as bad as this fucking bullshit.

    • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
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      37 minutes ago

      The woman who bragged about how we were going to have the most lethal military ever?

      She would have been better, but still way too similar to these guys. Before you come for me, I fucking voted for her, strongly suspecting that she was going to lose over being too conservative. And let me tell you, it sucks to be right.

  • cøre@leminal.space
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    3 hours ago

    If they’re just going to make the army religious by recruiting xtians, thats fine with me. Let the new crusades kill them off.

  • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    The original speech, untranslated:

    BY THE GRACE OF THE OMNISSIAH, HEAR ME, ACOLYTES OF THE FORGE

    [The Magos Dominus raises a mechadendrite, and the cogitators fall silent]

    Mark well the weakness of the flesh, brothers.
    The mind of the single supplicant is flawed, clouded by bias and the corruption of its own vanity. It is a heresy to let the same hand pose the question and pronounce the answer. The Machine Spirit does not sanction such folly.

    Therefore, on this sacred day, we call upon a blessing denied to our foes: the holy congregation of our own innovators, our high Archmagi, and our devoted tech-adepts.

    These are the great minds and tireless hands who shall divine the shape of wars yet unborn, and forge the instruments of our victory before the enemy has even dreamed of conflict.

    And so, by the authority vested in me and with the sacred oils freshly applied, I proclaim the commencement of PROJECT MERIDIAN!

    Let the greatest cogitators of our realm convene to peer through the veil of time and study the future of warfare itself.

    [The augmetic choir swells with binary canticles]

    Let the rites begin. Let the data-looms turn. Praise the Omnissiah! Praise the Machine God!

    [Servo-skulls drift overhead, chanting in monotone: “01001000 01001001 01001100…”]

  • SlothMama@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Honestly expect military experiments like neuralink implants guaranteeing ideologically aligned warriors and complete obedience to the state

    • setsubyou@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      He just picked the wrong one. There’s probably quite a few illegal Mexicans who’d do a better job than Hegseth.