Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

The Trump administration's new super intelligence task force met for the first time late last week.

The information's co-executive editor, Amir Efrati, and tech and politics reporter, Leo Schwartz, got a chance to speak with one of the leaders of the group, Emil Michael, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Pentagon's Chief Technology Officer.

They talked about the task force's first meeting, the Pentagon's frayed relationship with Anthropic, and the AI race with China.

Here is that conversation.

How do the defense and energy provisions affect planning? The defense and energy bills add sites and funding that a startup in the right product category can use.

The House Armed Services Committee markup of the FY twenty-seven National Defense Authorization Act, released June eight, two thousand twenty-six, adds biotechnology and biomanufacturing as eligible uses of the Industrial Base Fund in Section one thousand eight hundred twenty-two, and in Section two hundred twenty-three authorizes the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering with the Secretary of the Army to run a pilot program on forward deployable biomanufacturing.

The release text states no dollar amounts for either section.

H.R. seven thousand nine hundred thirty-six, the Bioindustrial Scale-Up for Supply Chains and Energy Resiliency Act of twenty twenty-six was introduced March sixteen, twenty twenty-six and referred to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

This is an effort to leverage the nation's premier private sector innovators, business leaders, and technologists to accelerate the field of advanced systems for the next generation of the battlefield.

Emil Michael, under the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, will lead the project and will be co-directed by Elon Musk, businessman and former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, Palmer Luckey, co-founder of defense technology company, Anduril Industries, and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House.

We should have the humility to recognize that the best forecasters of future conflict do not solely reside inside the Pentagon, Hegseth said.

Hegseth expects Project Meridian's findings to be completed and submitted in one hundred and twenty days.

And it's with the VBAT.

And in May, the Pentagon chose Shield AI to put Hivemind on Lucas, a cheap one-way attack drone that the Pentagon copied from Iran, Iran's, uh, Shahad, the same drone that Russia launches in the Ukraine, essentially.

And it's Breaking Defense report reported that the pilot program came out of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering shop, and that a single human operator will be in control of any decision that strikes a target.

But up to this point, that has not been the case, so I don't see why that would be the case moving forward.

... beheaded by the National Intelligence Director, Jay Clayton.

Other members include Federal Trade Commission Chair, Andrew Ferguson, and Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, uh, Emil Michael.

Task force reports jointly to Trump and the White House Chief of Staff-

Good

The Director of National Intelligence, J. Clayton, is one of the force's leaders.

Alongside FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Emil Michael, and OPM Director Scott Kupor.

FTC is consumer protection, like truth in advertising for AI claims.

Defense is obvious, national security and advanced tech.

Well, President Donald Trump, [clears throat] uh, announced, uh, members of his, uh, Super Intelligence Task Force, the group to be known as Super Intelligence Force, will be headed by National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton.

Other members include Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson and Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, uh, ML Michael.

The task force will reportedly jointly, uh, reports jointly to Trump and the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles.

Trump's bid to rebrand artificial intelligence as super intelligence got a big endorsement from Elon Musk, who posted to X yesterday morning, "No more AI.

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

Like Seth said, Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich, under the leadership of Emil Michael, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, will be focused on discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in the future need in their lifetimes without any creative limitations or restrictions on any future battlefield from under the earth to be on the moon all three men were in attendance at the pentagon as hexeth made his announcement and the pentagon chief said that their first meeting on project meridian would happen directly after the event in a sensitive compartmented information facility which is also called a skiff right after the speech we're going to hit the ground running memorably shortly after the announcement stressed the u.s military must not take our current advantages for granted I wonder if this is the memo that announced the creation of the new combatant command.

I don't know.

This is the Project Meridian thing.