Pete Hegseth laments ‘risk-averse’ defence culture in visit with Elon Musk
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Mr Pete Hegseth has made speeding weapons development and cutting costs a focus of his time as defence secretary.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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BROWNSVILLE, Texas – US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth lamented what he called the defence industry’s “risk-averse culture” and praised Mr Elon Musk during a visit to the SpaceX Starbase launch site, offering fresh evidence that the billionaire is back in the White House’s good graces after a dramatic falling out in 2025.
Mr Hegseth announced several plans meant to speed innovation and slammed what he called “woke” artificial intelligence (AI).
He confirmed the Defence Department’s plan to integrate Mr Musk’s Grok AI platform into its system despite a global backlash over the model allowing users to create sexualised images of people, including children,
The Pentagon chief’s criticism of major defence contractors – not including SpaceX – dovetails with US President Donald Trump’s demand last week for a US$500 billion (S$643 billion) boost in defence spending.
The administration has threatened to cut out some big companies if they do not speed up production and innovation.
Mr Trump demanded that they cap executive pay, and stop issuing dividends and buying back their own stock.
“This is about building an innovation pipeline that cuts through the overgrown bureaucratic underbrush and clears away the debris, Elon-style – preferably with a chainsaw – and to do so at speed and urgency that meets the moment,” Mr Hegseth said in a speech at the site in Brownsville, Texas.
Presidents of both parties for decades have tried and failed to speed weapons development and cut costs.
Mr Hegseth has made that a focus of his time as defence secretary, railing against major contractors and seeking to boost start-ups and new entrants.
At the same time, recent actions by the Pentagon have shown how hard Mr Hegseth’s goal will be to achieve.
Last week, the administration announced a seven-year pact with Lockheed Martin
SpaceX has emerged as a major contractor for the government.
The company holds US$4 billion worth of contracts with NASA to develop its behemoth Starship rocket into a lunar lander that can carry the agency’s astronauts to the moon.
SpaceX is one of an elite group of launch companies authorised to loft sensitive national security satellites to orbit for the US military.
SpaceX’s workhorse rockets, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, are the vehicles the company uses for defence missions.
Mr Musk introduced Mr Hegseth and made clear his vision goes far beyond more defence contracting.
“It’s like we want to make Star Trek real,” he said.
He added that he envisions spaceships bringing people to other planets and “ultimately going beyond our star system to other star systems where we meet aliens or discover long-dead alien civilisations”.
Mr Hegseth announced a rapid campaign to make the US military an “AI-first war-fighting force”, pledging to deploy models across classified and unclassified networks.
He suggested his department would push past attempts to put limits on AI use by the military.
The visit was a fresh signal that Mr Musk is back in the fold with the White House.
Mr Musk left his post as head of the Department of Government Efficiency in May and soon after led a public tirade against the White House for its budget-busting tax-cut Bill, at one point threatening to start a third political party.
The relationship has improved since then.
In November, Mr Musk returned to the White House as one of several business titans to attend a gala dinner to honour Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In another recent sign that the White House could lean on the world’s richest man to help advance national security objectives, Mr Trump suggested on Jan 11 that he would get Starlink involved in restoring internet service
“We need to be blunt here – we can no longer afford to wait a decade for our legacy prime contractors to deliver a perfect system,” Mr Hegseth said.
“Winning requires a new playbook. Elon wrote it with his algorithm – question every requirement, delete the dumb ones and accelerate like hell.”
SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas serves as the primary production and launch site for Starship, a launch system that is being developed to deliver large quantities of cargo to orbit, the Moon and, eventually, Mars.
Earlier on Jan 12, Mr Hegseth struck a conciliatory tone towards Lockheed during a visit to the defence company’s F-35 production facility, in contrast with Mr Trump’s criticism of defence contractors last week for relying too heavily on dividends and buybacks.
“I believe that Lockheed will step up,” Mr Hegseth said at the production site in Fort Worth, Texas. “I hope, based on what Lockheed Martin can do, that you win a lot – because you make incredible, exquisite platforms.” BLOOMBERG
