Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco
Not long after Elon Musk was tapped by Donald Trump to help lead a “Department of Government Efficiency,” he set his sights on a prime target: what the Pentagon spends its money on. In posts on his platform X in December, Mr. Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, declared that “America needs a large quantity of long-range drones (air, surface water and submarine) and hypersonic missiles.” He warned, “Anything manned will die very fast in a drone war.”
In some ways, Mr. Musk’s call is not new. Experts have been warning for years that we have entered a new age of autonomous warfare, and the Pentagon needs to keep up. The Trump administration is unusually open to remaking the U.S. war machine: Weeks before his inauguration, Mr. Trump began preparing to stack his Pentagon with executives from start-ups and tech investors like Stephen Feinberg, his nominee for deputy secretary of defense.
But for the Trump administration to bring meaningful reform, it will need to do more than buy drones and change the type of weapons the Pentagon buys. It will also need to change how our weapons are built and the speed at which they are acquired and introduced into U.S. forces.
No comments:
Post a Comment