The creation of “Project Meridian” is not a path to US military superiority but an admission of its own weakness, rooted in a financialized system rather than a technology gap.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced the creation of the 120 day task force, “Project Meridian.”
At face value, the initiative serves as a further symptom of the US’ terminal decline rather than any sort of path toward “long-term military superiority” or “absolute technological dominance.”
The necessity of the project itself is an oblique admission of current and growing US military weakness — increasingly on display amid US wars and proxy wars worldwide in which US weapons are both falling behind in capabilities and quantities.
The stated path the project seeks to take to address this growing military weakness — “leveraging the nation’s premier private-sector innovators, business leaders, and technologists” to “discover and accelerate the fielding of advanced systems” — ignores completely the fundamentals of the US system which is directly responsible for this growing weakness and dysfunction relative to the rising multipolar world and especially China, in the first place.
The idea that future technologies and “wonder weapons” can somehow restore US military power around the globe in the face of a rising multipolar world order ignores the pressing fundamental questions regarding why the US seeks to project military power worldwide to begin with, whether it is necessary or not, and whether it is sustainable or even possible to do so.
The Root of the Problem
The “private-sector” — large corporate-financier monopolies predicated on the perpetual pursuit of profit and power (driven by shareholder primacy) and which have captured and control US foreign and domestic policy toward that end — are what drives the US’ global military presence and the “need” for “long-term military superiority.”
The multitude of wars, proxy wars, and potential wars the US is instigating at any given time around the globe are aimed at eliminating any obstacle to the power and profit of this “private-sector” and to implement the coercion of and control over nations and regions the US has already successfully subordinated.
Thus, this military power is not used to uphold the legitimate national security of the people and territory of the United States — but as a means of undermining and overcoming the national security of other people and territories abroad.
Proponents of US primacy would argue that if the US did not seek global primacy, others would — a false premise based on an interpretation of “realism” hat assumes all people and nations are driven by the same sociobiological need to “dominate” as the special interests and the system they’ve created in the West.
Back in reality — nations currently exist in parallel to the US with the ability to project military power globally but have deliberately chosen not to — including both Russia and China — and only develop and use military force in reaction to US encirclement, encroachment, and aggression (by proxy or otherwise).
The systems of governance and economics in nations outside the West are likewise built from the foundation up in a fundamentally different manner — one in which the rational nature of humanity — not an inherent sociobiological desire for dominance — guides nations and their policies for specific people-driven purposes (accessible healthcare and education, modern infrastructure, etc.) rather than solely profit and power.
By doing so, these nations ensure access to wealth and influence, but in a sustainable manner — the difference between hungry chimpanzees in the jungle stripping bare fruit trees and humans who have learned to grow and farm for food. Both are driven by hunger — one chooses the most direct (and ultimately unsustainable) means of satisfying that hunger — while the other chooses to leverage ingenuity to overcome natural limitations on available food supplies.
If nations do not seek to threaten the US — or even develop the capabilities to do so — this means the entire premise of “Project Meridian” is based on not only a wholly unnecessary imperative, but one at cross purpose with international law, endangering global peace and stability. There is an added irony to the growing military and economic crisis consuming the West — it is created by this unsustainable and unnecessary pursuit of global primacy — not by some threat the rest of the globe poses to the West or the United States.
Project Meridian Built on Fantasy, not Facts
The “advanced systems” the US imagines it will “field” to achieve “long-term military superiority” may consist of technology the US is capable of developing, but not at a rate faster than the emerging multipolar world, and certainly not at the scales nations like Russia and China can deploy them at.
Project Meridian and all other attempts to address the US’ dwindling military advantages have not only refused to examine the necessity of their imperatives, but refuse to face the insurmountable nature of their objectives.
The monopoly the US enjoyed over technology post-Cold War and throughout the early 21st century has convinced policymakers of some inherently superior quality within the US system or among “Western” peoples rather than despite it.
Co–directing the project will be Elon Musk of SpaceX, Palmer Luckey of arms startup Anduril, and career politician Newt Gingrich, along with other academic, policy, and industry “experts.” Both SpaceX and Anduril exemplify the fading advantages the US had enjoyed for decades in terms of technological innovation and military power.
SpaceX’ Starlink and Star shield satellite constellations have provided useful, but not insurmountable advantages to Washington’s Ukrainian proxies amid war with Russia.
Anduril — created specifically to reverse the growing disparity in quality and quantity in US military hardware versus Russia and China — has failed to leverage AI (artificial intelligence) and software-defined manufacturing to close the growing gap. This is primarily because both Russia and China are already using both technologies in their vastly larger and more efficient state-owned enterprises to develop and manufacture similar or better weapon systems.
Anduril’s drones in particular have proven such a failure in Ukraine that Ukrainian troops refuse to use the systems being transferred to them.
What Anduril has achieved, is the production of weapons at slightly cheaper costs than traditional US arms manufacturing monopolies, with a slightly faster innovation pace — but still falls far short of Russian — let alone Chinese — prices, capabilities, and of course quantities.
Newt Gingrich — the third “co-director” of “Project Meridian” — is a career-politician and vocal warmonger who has contributed to the very system creating the US’ current decline in the first place and has no discernible intentions to change.
If the US does not possess an inherently superior ability to innovate — either because of the composition of its population or the manner in which its political and economic system is organized, and no intention of changing that system — no project of any kind organized to “study” and implement a path toward continued domination and superiority will succeed.
Because the people co-directing “Project Meridian” are examples of the sort of deficient thinking contributing to the US’ decline, failure is only further guaranteed.
What “Project Meridian” may achieve is the streamlining of an inherently inferior system, putting off but not avoiding its ultimate displacement by more viable alternatives. It may also serve as a means of disrupting the global economy and thus the basis upon which Russia, China, and the growing multipolar world are building more viable alternatives — the equivalent of a criminal planning to burn down a rival business because of their inability to compete head-on with it.
Even if the US acknowledged the limits of its profit-driven system and made the decision to radically transform it into a purpose-driven alternative — while it might manage to eclipse Russia in terms of innovation and industrial production — it would still face extreme disadvantages vis-à-vis China — possessing a fourth of China’s population, thus a deficit in trained manpower and a vastly smaller industrial base.
There is also the reality that a purpose-driven US would replace its financialized Ponzi-economy with one tied to actual production — and thus would no longer be required to seek out, confront, and eliminate productive systems abroad — but would instead seek out to cooperate with them.
The Approaching End Game
The US cannot compete with nations like Russia and China which exist as functioning, productive nations, prioritizing industry and the national workforces required to maintain it, through gimmicks ultimately subordinated to an unproductive financialized Ponzi-economy.
Because the very interests benefiting from the financialization of the US have captured and controlled America’s political system, media, education, and all of its essential industries — a discussion about transitioning from financialization to production can’t even take place, let alone take the first step toward making the transition.
Only with a collapse at home in the US of these interests and the system they created, together with the success abroad of productive alternative systems like China’s, Russia’s and many others will it be possible for Americans to enjoy the same benefits of billions of people abroad — modern infrastructure, affordable healthcare, accessible and relevant education, and thriving industry for employment.
This is precisely why the interests in the US today, benefiting from decades of financialization and the monopolies it militarily enforced, are so determined to prevent the success of nations like China and so desperate to leverage unprecedented technology like AI to make sustainable a system that is in reality entirely unsustainable.
Because of how unlikely a breakthrough in AI or in other frontier technologies is to empower the US in a way other superpowers could not immediately replicate or surpass, it is much more likely the US will use its remaining strength to “overturn the game board,” destroying the existing global order multipolarism is building itself on top of, in the hopes of emerging out the other side of deliberate worldwide chaos in a position of advantage.
The word finds itself at a critical inflection point — where technology, industry, and innovation can either lead us forward away from our worst natural impulses — or turn us into prisoners of them. Only time will tell whether the multipolar world is prepared to ensure the former, or if the special interests driving the US will manage to reimpose upon the world (including upon Americans themselves) the latter.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer
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