Hegseth, Elon Signal Warp-Speed Shift for U.S. Military Tech [WATCH]

War Secretary Pete Hegseth joined Elon Musk on Monday at SpaceX headquarters in South Texas, where the two leaders outlined plans to accelerate technological innovation at the Pentagon and overhaul what Hegseth described as a slow and outdated defense bureaucracy, as reported by The New York Post.

BREAKING: Elon Musk met with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in Texas today. pic.twitter.com/1jLaRnSY2i

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) January 12, 2026

Hegseth flashed a Vulcan salute as he was welcomed by Musk to Starbase, the small South Texas town incorporated by SpaceX employees and home to the company’s primary rocket development and launch facility.

During the event, Musk framed the moment in characteristically futuristic terms.

“We want to make Star Trek real,” Musk said as he greeted the war secretary.

“Star Trek real,” Hegseth replied after being introduced.

Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk … pic.twitter.com/natTZQ5qzP

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) January 13, 2026

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Hegseth’s remarks were delivered as part of his ongoing “Arsenal of Freedom” tour, which is focused on reshaping the Pentagon’s approach to defense modernization.

He said the United States must “win the strategic competition for 21st century technological supremacy,” emphasizing emerging capabilities such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, hypersonic weapons, space capabilities, directed energy, biotechnology, and long-range drones.

According to Hegseth, the Department of War’s previous approach to fielding new technologies had fallen behind global competitors.

“Until President Trump took office, the Department of War’s process for fielding new capabilities had not kept up with the times,” he said.

“Worse than that, we’ve done nothing but add layer upon layer” of bureaucracy, Hegseth said, criticizing what he called “endless projects with no accountable owners” and “high churn with little progress and few outputs.”

“That sounds about like the exact opposite of SpaceX,” he added, warning that the status quo represented a “dangerous game with potentially fatal consequences.”

Hegseth said the Pentagon is shifting away from what he described as a peacetime mindset. “We are done running a peacetime science fair while our potential adversaries are running a wartime arms race,” he said.

He pledged to “supercharge” innovation by removing bureaucratic barriers and streamlining decision-making.

He said the department will “cut through overgrown bureaucratic underbrush and clear away the debris, Elon-style, preferably with a chainsaw,” to speed the deployment of advanced military technology.

As part of the Pentagon’s expanded focus on artificial intelligence, Hegseth announced that the Department of War will begin using X’s Grok AI platform later this month.

The system will be deployed alongside Google’s Gemini AI model across both classified and unclassified department networks.

Hegseth also announced the appointment of Cameron Stanley, a former Amazon Web Services executive, as the new chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of War.

Emphasizing that AI effectiveness depends on access to information, Hegseth said he has directed that “all appropriate data” be shared across “every service and component” of the military so it can be “fully leveraged for warfighting capability development and operational advantage.”

“We must ensure that America’s military AI dominates, so that no adversary can exploit that same technology to hold our national security interests or our citizens at risk,” Hegseth said.

BREAKING: Elon Musk just brought Pete Hegseth on stage at SpaceX in Texas.

EPIC.

Elon personally gave Pete a tour of Starbase.

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Innovation. Strength. National power.

Team America is stronger than ever. pic.twitter.com/iwfIyHAejt

— ⁿᵉʷˢ Barron Trump (@BarronTNews_) January 13, 2026

He warned that while U.S. adversaries lack America’s entrepreneurs, capital markets, combat-tested operational data, and classified technologies, those advantages could be squandered “if we suffocate those advantages under a stifling bureaucracy.”

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