Elon Musk is back in the White House as privatisation spreads to warfare

October 4, 2026 — 4:30pm

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Last year, the world’s wealthiest man left the White House after 130 chaotic days as the technically informal head of a department that hacked at the federal government’s ability to deliver on its duties. On his last day, he stood in the Oval Office with a black eye and a golden key to the White House.

Weeks later, he ignited a public feud with President Donald Trump, finding himself outside the president’s small decision-making circle.

Now Musk has been announced as one of three members of a new Pentagon commission tasked with mapping the future of American warfare, alongside former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Palmer Luckey, chief executive of military technology company Anduril.

Project Meridian marks a new step in a political transformation larger than any of those men, shifting important responsibility away from democratic government.

Rather than privatising how the state operates, Trump’s Washington is now testing the privatisation of decisions about what the state will need.

Beginning in 1980, the Reagan administration redrew the line between the private and public sector. Services once seen as the duty of a responsible government were entrusted to the open market, which could price them as they saw fit.

Despite the logging of the pillars of government, judgment remained the core responsibility of the state. Companies could sell to the government, but the companies did not decide what a defence strategy........

© The Age