- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- usa@midwest.social
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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Didn’t Hegseth just proclaim no weirdos, no beardos & no fatties?
Oh gee, what could go wrong putting a foreign born white supremacist technocrat in a lead position of our military with full access to its systems so he can integrate an AI system no one understands or knows how to defend against or extract should we want to do so at some point.
But he saved so much money with DOGE and nothing bad happened there!
/s
Don’t forget this douche
They should have added Palmer Luckey to the headline. Extremely concerning that he has a prominent voice in the future of the US military and access to top level sensitive information.
If people are unfamiliar with him, they should do a brief search. It deepens what a terrible idea this is.
Who’s that douche?
Palmer Luckey. He made his money in the early days of VR. Think he runs a defence contractor now. Apparently he’s a massive arsehole.
Yes he runs Anduril, and is another Thiel wannabe weirdo psychopath billionaire.
I’m so upset I bought a Rift DK2 back in the day
How long before Grok suggests invading South Africa in the name of “liberation” or some other BS
Elon’s the least stupid of the three.
Yeah but it’s such a low bar
He can’t steal the data twice!
The problem is he doesn’t need to anyway. The govt data was all that was missing to integrate into his machine learning and ai systems to craft whatever surveillance, hacking, predictive, repressive, and even murderous systems he wants. They already had public data they collected, they had private data they bought, all that was left was govt data to combine all three. Now they’re on to using it for really really bad things.
I bet if he shoved that up my ass it would be amazing.
Agreed but no need to denigrate foreign-born folks.
I’m not, it’s a security risk, that’s simple logic that doesn’t have to be bigoted in nature. The current administration does use foreign national status to denigrate and abuse others due to their bigotry all the time, as does the Republican Party, so I can understand some reflexive accusations, but do not be mistaken, the US and every nation on earth have enough trouble as it is securing their governments, their secrets, weapons, economies, and people, and all of them have had to be wary of foreign national security threats due to those concerns for all of time. It’s literally encoded into our Constitution and who is allowed to head up the executive branch, via the office of the Presidency, as commander in chief.
Everything is a security risk. My comment wasn’t reflexive. We’ve had plenty of foreign born military folks, including generals. That portion is not why they are threats. It is the wealth hoarding white supremacy.
It’s all of it combined. He was forced out of Canada, or his father was, for their bigoted views and that’s why they fled to SA, and eventually landed here to continue those belief systems and behavioral patterns, that makes them extreme threats based squarely on all the reasons you mentioned AS WELL and inextricably because of their foreign national history. You don’t go all pc to avoid looking like an asshole when valid national security concerns are blinking so red and bright it’s a like a supernova of red flags and lights going off
Newt Gingrich is still alive?!?
Elon Musk hasn’t drowned in a hot tub?
On all that ketamine it’s a roll of the dice every day.
The single most terrifying thing about this, to me, is how few people seem to know what Palmer Luckey’s company Anduril does. They are building autonomous kill bots.
The fucking “let’s build skynet” guy is being invited to US military leadership and his name is dropped from the headline and mentioned in barely 2% of replies.
But he just said no fatties, weirdos, or wimps.
He didn’t say no ketamine.
Yea but said ketamine addict IS a fatty, weirdo and a wimp.
Newt Gingrich is still alive???
unfortunately
Haven’t seen him in nearly a decade. Bet he looks even more like shit.
I last heard his name on /b/. I haven’t been to /b/ since the 2000s.
TIL
He’s 83, hopefully not for long
The pact Newt made with the demon that shares his body has extended his lifespan but not forever.
Hegseth: “no weirdos”
Not even consistent with his own bullshit.
onetime trillionaire Elon Musk
Look I know there are bigger problems we need to work on, but I still have to appreciate the little things
Honestly he was never a trillionaire, that “worth” was merely speculative and way over-valued. A very transparent PR gimmick.
Elon the immigrant? Strange move.
What the actual fuck even is this fever dream, honestly
bottom of the barrel humans known as MAGA decided to fuck the entire world over rather than work on themselves
We’re fucking doomed.
If you’re American, consider that the rest of the world has been reading comments like this daily for years.
Is that the big plan? Every day, new BS, “we’re cooked chat”. Repeat.
Begging Americans to decide now what is too far and put it on the wall or something. As of right now, it sounds like frogs slowly being boiled in the pot.
Yes that is literally his plan. Put out constant bullshit headlines about deranged stuff like this, so you become exhausted and stop paying attention. And then he steals billions from his various crimes.
He’s on tape saying as much.
I think the destruction of military power for all the major nation states is the plan of the wealthy.
IMO They are preparing for a world of corporations and billionaires with their own militas. So destroying the competition before they announce the new game has begun.
Thats why all the bluster and fury stops at a certain level before anything changes the plan.
Well, we might be okay.
I don’t think any of those dorks have seen COLOSSUS: The Forbin Project yet.
WTF…
Honestly neglecting to mention Palmer Luckey in the title is burying the fucking lede here.
He has had a surveillance/military hardware busines for like ten/fifteen fucking years. Anduril.
Also the name, Meridian, deeply implies and ties back to that idea that they want to control the whole Western hemisphere.
Damn, so more ties to Thiel?
And they’re putting anduril and fucking grok together to make military decisions?
What could fucking go wrong…
(Context: in pretty much every independent study I’ve seen comparing the performance of frontier AI models in various experiments (running a radio show, running a simulated society, etc.), grok is consistently the most willing and eager to say/do evil shit and commit atrocities).
Also, elon musk knows fucking nothing about military operations or warfare. He’s gonna hallucinate some bullshit and get innocent people killed.
It’s just Elon telling the DoW how many more of Elon’s products they need. While he maintains the ability to disable all of them on a whim.
You mean the department of defense. Its gulf of mexico too and lake ontario while we’re at it 🙄 Stop indulging the moron please.
I work in defense. People are calling it the Department of War, and there is historical context for it. It actually strikes me as less Orwellian and more honest about the types of assholes we are.
I agree that Trump can’t singlehandedly rename international bodies of water, but I just don’t give a fuck about the executive renaming parts of the executive branch.
I think you mean you work in war (/s but also not really)
Quit.
Hah! You almost got me The Onion!!
Wait…
Yup I had to double-check where I was.
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.
