This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted their desire to \u201cmake Star Trek real\u201d\u2014while unconsciously reminding us of what the utopian science fiction franchise is fundamentally about.<\/p>\n
Their Tuesday event was the latest in Hegseth\u2019s ongoing \u201cArsenal of Freedom\u201d tour, which was held at SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. (Itself a newly created town that takes its name from a term popularized by Star Trek.)<\/p>\n
Neither Musk nor Hegseth seemed to recall that the \u201cArsenal of Freedom\u201d phrase\u2014at least in the context of Star Trek\u2014is also the title of a 1988 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That episode depicts an AI-powered weapons system, and its automated salesman, which destroys an entire civilization and eventually threatens the crew of the USS Enterprise. (Some Trekkies<\/a> made the connection, however.)<\/p>\n In his opening remarks<\/a> this week, Musk touted his grandiose vision for SpaceX, saying that he wanted to \u201cmake Starfleet Academy real.\u201d (Starfleet Academy is the fictional educational institution at the center of an upcoming new Star Trek TV series that debuts on January 15<\/a>.)<\/p>\n When Musk introduced Hegseth, the two men shook hands. Then Hegseth flashed the Vulcan salute to the crowd and echoed Musk by saying, \u201cStar Trek real!\u201d<\/p>\n Hegseth honed in on the importance of innovation and artificial intelligence to the US military.<\/p>\n \u201cVery soon, we will have the world\u2019s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department. Long overdue,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n \u201cTo further that, today at my direction, we\u2019re executing an AI acceleration strategy that will extend our lead in military AI established during President Trump\u2019s first term. This strategy will unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus on investments and demonstrate the execution approach needed to ensure we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted their desire to \u201cmake Star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-370737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}