Office of Net Assessment

Speak to that relationship between private industry and technology and the Defense Department, and how it's changed the way it so dramatically has.

has.Yeah, so the book was born from a few stories that I had been told by former Pentagon officials, and one of them that you referenced was I was told about this study that was done in 2013 that was commissioned by a secretive and sort of future-looking office of the Pentagon called the Office of Net Assessment.

And they basically started with the premise of could a, a rogue billionaire, a rogue private entrepreneur build and sell nuclear weapons and, and earn a profit in doing it? And so they got together a group of people who looked at this idea, and they came to the conclusion, I mean, they priced out everything, how much it would cost to hire the workers, how much-- where would you get the uranium from, how much would it cost to enrich it? Where would you put the marketing arm of the Pentagon? And they came to the conclusion, yeah, it would take about five years and a billion dollars, but you could make a tidy profit off of it.

Um, and I went back when I was at the Wall Street Journal and interviewed the participants of the study because it specifically says, you know, it didn't name anyone.

And of course, recently, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced this Project Meridian that would study the battlefield of the future.

He got rid of or downsized the office of net assessment and has created this new, uh, Project Meridian, and he's put in charge of it Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, along with the 83-year-old Newt Gingrich.

Now, uh [laughs] well, what do you think of that? I, I'm-

Uh

... bursting into t- uh, just it's extraordinary.

Yeah.

Um, so as you correctly referenced, the Pentagon had or has, um, an office called the Office of Net Assessment that since, uh, the ear- the early to mid-1970s has been responsible for doing just that, doing studies on the future of warfare.

Now, I have some criticisms of that office as well, um, but that is what they, um, were supposed to do.

Yeah, we also have that already in existence in the Force.

It's called the Office of Net Assessment, and it's also an attempt to, uh, uh, it's confusing to me, because in the same speech, uh, Secretary Hegseth talked about deleting another 20% of the general and flag officer corps, and yet he's creating another organization to take its place with his, which is a four-star headquarters.

headquarters.Yeah.

Makes no sense.

So tell me, after UCSD, what came next?

Well, I had an option either to go to Cambridge to go to graduate school and study economics or work for a company that was doing consulting work for the Department of Defense, particularly Office of Net Assessment.

And so my infinite ambition and wisdom, I tried to do both at the same time.

So I got the clearances, I was working, and I'd go to Cambridge.

They get asked on defense matters like, "Well, what are your opinions on autonomous weapons?" That is going to be a debate question at minimum in the primaries, and it ain't gonna be good for anybody.

We have organizations in the department that are supposed to be doing this kind of stuff, like the Office of Net Assessment, which was recently, you know, kind of reinvigorated.

And, uh-

And that's why it wasn't-

So you're getting rid of senior military officers and replacing them with people who are vying for Pentagon contracts.

In the same speech, he also announced what is it called? Project Meridian to study the future of warfare, which is essentially just what the Office of Net Assessment did right before Hegseth got it.

Who's

leading Project Meridian?