Elon Musk is Back In Washington Despite How DOGE Ended

Elon Musk is back in Washington. On September 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth named him co-director of Project Meridian, a Pentagon study of how America will fight future wars.

His last government job ended early. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the cost-cutting unit Musk helped lead, fell apart and closed without a final report.

What Musk Will Actually Do at the Pentagon

Musk shares the job with Palmer Luckey, founder of defense firm Anduril, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. This is just how he co-led DOGE with biotech founder Vivek Ramaswamy under the same Trump administration.

Elon Musk is now working directly with the US military.He's co-leading "Project Meridian", a new initiative to develop futuristic weapons and use more AI in combat. pic.twitter.com/okThFLsWmB

— Pubity (@pubity) October 1, 2026

Their task is to map future battlefields, from deep underground to the space around the moon. Pentagon tech chief Emil Michael is facilitating the work, according to the department’s release.

The role carries no command over troops, budgets, or weapons buying. Hegseth’s signed memo does not even name Musk. Findings are due by January 28, 2027.

“Rather, its purpose is to creatively look into the future and identify the domains we must conquer, and capabilities we must master … it is futuristic, on purpose,” Hegseth indicated.

Yet the study covers ground Musk already sells into. SpaceX holds a $2.29 billion Space Force satellite contract.

How Musk’s DOGE Experiment Ended

In October 2024, Musk pitched $2 trillion in savings. DOGE claimed $215 billion when it expired on July 4, 2026.

Federal auditors later tested part of that number. In an August report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s spending watchdog, reviewed $110.3 billion in contract, grant, and lease savings DOGE had listed online.

It found that $27.4 billion came from contracts with no termination action. It also could not check how savings were counted for 96% of the grant total.

This means auditors could not back up about two-thirds of the savings they checked.

The Department of Government Efficiency had stopped working long before that. BeInCrypto reported in November 2025 that DOGE had dissolved, eight months early.

Budget Director Russ Vought later told lawmakers no closing report was planned, as BeInCrypto covered at DOGE’s July sunset.

Tesla Takedown, the group behind protests at Tesla showrooms during DOGE, condemned the new post.

“Did we learn nothing from DOGE?…Donald Trump is again handing this same unelected billionaire sweeping influence over military strategy and autonomous warfare under Project Meridian,” the team said in a statement shared with BeInCrypto.

The announcement came one day after Musk sat beside Trump at a White House lunch. There, tech chiefs signed a voluntary AI safety accord.

Meridian’s public report, due in January, will be the first result anyone can judge.