Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) will soon turn their attention to the Pentagon's vast budget as President Donald Trump's administration looks to cut federal spending, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday.
The Pentagon is by far the largest defence department in the world, with a budget of $895 billion for the coming fiscal year, more than the next nine countries combined. It enjoys bipartisan support and conservative politicians claim that, even with its hefty price tag, it remains underfunded.
“The US needs to spend more than the Biden administration was willing to, who historically underinvested in the capabilities of our military,” Mr Hegseth said, even as he acknowledged concerns that America's $36.5 trillion debt is “a national security liability".
The Pentagon's near $1 trillion annual budget might seem like a ripe place to start looking for government waste, especially considering the department has never fully passed an audit since these were implemented in 2018, meaning not all funds can be accounted for.
Mr Musk, the world's richest man, has spent the weeks since Mr Trump's inauguration gutting federal agencies including the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon, and his team working in collaboration with us,” Mr Hegseth told reporters while on a visit to Germany, calling the billionaire “a great patriot interested in advancing the American first agenda".
Mr Musk appeared alongside Mr Trump later on Tuesday to talk about how his Doge office is uncovering fraud, abuse and waste at federal agencies.
Mr Musk also has billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, primarily for his SpaceX and Starlink enterprises. When asked if he would be policing himself, he said everything Doge does will be transparent.
"So if you see anything, you say, like, wait a second, hey, Elon, that doesn't that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there. I don't think people are gonna be shy about saying that," Mr Musk said.
Mr Hegseth suggested that any cuts would focus on areas considered unnecessary for war fighting.
“There is waste – redundancies and head counts in headquarters that need to be addressed,” he said. “There's just no doubt, look at a lot of the climate programmes that have been pursued at the Defence Department. [It] is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We're in the business of deterring and winning wars, so things like that we want to look for to find efficiencies, and many others.”
He also suggested weapons systems procurement could be streamlined to save money.
But, he stressed, “the Defence Department is not USAID".
“USAID has got a lot of problems that I talked about with the troops pursuing globalist agendas that don't have a connection to 'America First'. That's not the Defence Department,” Mr Hegseth said.
“But we're also not perfect either. So where we can find billions of dollars … every dollar we save, there is $1 that goes to war fighters, and that's good for the American people.”
At the weekend, Mr Trump's National Security Adviser Mike Waltz suggested that the Pentagon's shipbuilding processes could be an area of particular interest for Doge.
Mr Hegseth is travelling to Brussels for a Nato meeting this week, as well as a gathering of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.
“We’re going to have straight talk with our friends,” he said of the upcoming sessions. Mr Trump has called for Nato allies to spend 5 per cent of their gross domestic products on defence. Twenty-three allies meet or exceed Nato's current 2 per cent target.
There are no immediate plans to withdraw US troops from their positions around the world, Mr Hegseth said after meeting top brass at US Africa Command and US European Command in Stuttgart.
“It would be the wrong planning assumption to say America’s abandoning something, or America’s leaving,” Mr Hegseth said. “No. America’s smart to observe, plan, prioritise and project power where we need to deter conflict.”
