Hegseth Vows to Slash Pentagon Bureaucracy and Unleash Tech Innovation Alongside Elon Musk

Tech billionaire and Trump administration ally Elon Musk met Tuesday with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at a SpaceX facility, where Hegseth outlined plans to harness technological innovation within the War Department to strengthen U.S. military capabilities and make the country an even more formidable force to be reckoned with.

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

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) January 12, 2026

Hegseth even flashed the Vulcan Salute from Star Trek, as he agreed with Elon that they wanted to “make Star Trek real.”

This speech by @elonmusk was inspirational AND aspirational! Let’s make @SpaceX like @StarTrek but for real! And check out @PeteHegseth doing the Vulcan salute! 🖖 Live long and prosper! pic.twitter.com/Wf4iYVRxim

— Omar Bars – Rap Artist (@OmarBarsMusic) January 13, 2026

“We want to make Star Trek real,” Musk said, welcoming Hegseth to Starbase, a small Texas town founded by SpaceX employees and home to the billionaire’s sprawling rocket-building facility and launch site.

“Star Trek real,” Hegseth replied.

Elon Musk personally guiding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth through Starbase, proudly showcasing the revolutionary Raptor 3 engine – the pinnacle of American innovation driving the future of space exploration and national strength. 🇺🇸🚀

And here are some key highlights of why… pic.twitter.com/GlExSf1RMe

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 13, 2026

During Hegseth’s speech as part of his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour, he emphasized the need for the US to “win the strategic competition for 21st century technological supremacy.” As part of America’s technological supremacy, Hegseth announced that X’s AI, Grok, would be integrated into military systems.

“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. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network. pic.twitter.com/zG0gKPAVkf

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 13, 2026

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the integration of Elon Musk’s xAI platform, Grok, into military networks as part of a new ‘AI acceleration strategy’ during a visit to SpaceX pic.twitter.com/RnOA4xD9GZ

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 13, 2026

Up until President Trump took office again, he argued, the country’s military capabilities had “not kept up with the times.”

“Worse than that, we’ve done nothing but add layer upon layer” of bureaucracy, Hegseth said, which results in “endless projects with no accountable owners” at the Pentagon and “high churn with little progress and few outputs.”

“That sounds about like the exact opposite of SpaceX,” he added.

Pledging to “supercharge” innovation at the War Department, Hegseth said the Pentagon is “done running a peacetime science fair while our potential adversaries are running a wartime arms race.” He promised to “cut through overgrown bureaucratic underbrush and clear away the debris, Elon-style, preferably with a chainsaw” to push new technology into the field.

Hegseth warned that while U.S. adversaries “do not have our entrepreneurs … our capital markets … our combat-proven operational data … our hard-won classified technologies,” nor the ability to go to “downtown Tehran or downtown Caracas without being seen in the process,” none of it will matter “if we suffocate those advantages under a stifling bureaucracy.”

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America’s military.

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