Lawsuit says Pentagon’s future warfare panel lacks transparency and balance

A lawsuit filed earlier this month by three government watchdog groups argues that the Defense Department assembled its Project Meridian task force to study the future of warfare in violation of federal law. According to the complaint, the task force fails to meet requirements under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA, which include a defined structure and purpose, transparency and public input, and balanced membership. The lawsuit alleges that the Defense Department failed to follow several procedures required under FACA. Among them, the department did not publish a notice in the Federal Register, which would allow the public to review materials and submit comments, or consult the General Services Administration, or GSA, to determine whether the research would serve the public interest. In a statement, Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, one of the plaintiffs, said FACA “sets clear requirements about transparency and avoiding conflicts of interest.” He argued that the Defense Department must either comply with those requirements or disband the project. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian in September, he named Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, both owners of defense companies, and conservative politician Newt Gingrich as its directors. Nineteen others were also appointed to participate, most of whom have financial ties to the defense industry or are political allies of the administration. According to the complaint, Musk’s SpaceX holds approximately $8 billion in defense contracts, while Luckey’s Anduril Industries holds approximately $25 billion. Other participants include executives from software and AI company Oracle, autonomous shipbuilder Saronic Technologies, manufacturer Hadrian Automation and humanoid robotics company Agility Robotics, as well as investors in other defense companies. The lawsuit also challenges the qualifications of participants without direct financial interests in the project, arguing that they “do not provide fair balance.” Their experience, according to the complaint, is largely limited to working with companies already represented on the panel or advancing the Trump administration’s political agenda. Before filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say they offered to make their own experts available to the project but received no response. “Given Project Meridian’s purpose to ‘map the trajectory of future warfare,’ the views of its members do not approach fair balance,” the lawsuit says, adding that the panel “has no meaningful representation from any person or entity with a record of advocating for restraint in the proliferation and use of military assets.” Sherman argued that federal law prohibits the Defense Department from “getting advice in secret, by defense contractors with enormous potential conflicts of interest.” He said the department is “soliciting private counsel from contractors about military capacity, including the president’s largest political benefactor.” The other plaintiffs are the nonprofit organizations Public Citizen and the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO. Their leaders argued that the panel would “very predictably” recommend increased government spending on “AI-enabled weaponry” and “further skew national security policy toward corporate priorities, and away from the public interest.” Hegseth gave Project Meridian the deadline of Jan. 28 to submit a 30-page report of its findings. The Defense Department also commissioned the research nonprofit Mitre Corporation to help coordinate the project.