Emil Michael, Under Secretary for Research and Engineering and Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Defense, joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ to discuss Anduril winning an up to $2.9 billion contract with the U.S. Navy, working with ‘Super Intelligence Force’, AI safety concerns, and more.
What Emil Michael said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Emil Michael, Undersecretary for Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense, discussed Project Meridian, a public study run by MITRE to anticipate future warfare technologies, emphasizing the need for diverse voices from industry, academia, and former military to avoid surprises. He argued the US is much better at innovating military technology than China but must improve production at scale, citing Ukraine's drone output as an example. On the Superintelligence Force, Michael said it focuses on future risks and opportunities, countering scare tactics and ensuring AI companies are liable for risks, referencing export controls on Anthropic and the White House accord requiring independent evaluators. He predicted consumer AI products like Grok Bot and Dots will show benefits to Americans within a year, and stated past AI incidents were preventable by the labs themselves. He declined to advise on whether companies should go public, noting open source models will impact the market.
Key takeaways
Project Meridian is a public study run by MITRE to anticipate future warfare technologies and avoid missing next-generation innovations.
The US is much better at innovating military technology than China but must improve production at scale, as seen with Ukraine's drone output.
The Superintelligence Force focuses on future risks and opportunities, ensuring AI companies are liable and take risks seriously.
Past AI incidents, like those at Anthropic, were preventable by the labs themselves if they built sandboxes and checked logs properly.
Consumer AI products like Grok Bot and Dots will show benefits to average Americans within the next year.
Numbers and commitments
Figure
What it refers to
Type
At
10 or 20 years
timeframe for future warfare scenarios in Project Meridian
0:20How do you make sure that doesn't raise conflict of interest questions, as both he and Musk are major contractors now for all these new government projects?
1:34Why is it important that the outsiders get a say in our strategy and military defense for the future?
2:25Is this the new sort of Lockheed and Northrop Grumman's?
3:16Are we better than China at innovating here on military technology?
3:54Is it about sort of looking ahead to future risks or investigating things we already know something about, like Hugging Face?
Okay. Thank you, Eamon. Eamon Javers, good setup. For more on this story, let's bring in Emil Michael, CTO and Undersecretary for Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense, who was also just named to President Trump's Superintelligence Force. It's great to have you, Emil.
Sarah, welcome back. So maybe let's just start on the Eamon question there that he just raised with this new big Navy contract for Anduril and Palmer Luckey, the fact that he's now sort of in the semi-official role advising the U.S. government. How do you make sure that doesn't raise conflict of interest questions, as both he and Musk are major contractors now for all these new government projects?
Yes. So we call it Project Meridian. That's the future of warfare. It's being run by a nonprofit called MITRE. And what MITRE has done is collected a bunch of experts, academics, former generals, industry leaders, and brought them together to talk about what warfare might look like in 10 or 20 years. And the idea is that we missed, in some ways, the Ukraine and Russia war that started during the Biden administration, sort of the proliferation of drones and counter-drones. And the idea is not to miss the next generation of new technologies that are hitting warfare. So we have a robust conflict process, and it's being run by a nonprofit. So there's really nothing to see here.
Well, this is not outsiders having a say. This is going to be a public study where we publish the results. And it's really to tell Congress, it's to tell industry, all kinds of industry, supply chain, critical minerals providers, like all kinds of things that we're realizing we need now. We just don't want to be surprised in the future. So having outsiders who think about these things, both academics and former military and industry, is exactly the right kind of mix that you want, because you need to mobilize an entire nation in the event of a conflict. And so it just makes sense to have them around the table versus people who've never seen or never had any thought process around these kinds of things.
I mean, it does strike me that in this administration, as technology develops and the Department of Defense moves closer to these, you know, game-changing technologies, it's Anduril, it's Palantir, it's SpaceX. Is this the new sort of Lockheed and Northrop Grumman's?
Well, I think we definitely want more than five prime contractors. And those three are great contractors. We also need the AI companies at the table. We need the supply chain companies at the table. Like there's a long chain of supply chain that goes into making anything that we use in warfare. There's also chips, all the things that sustain a domestic economy that protect the homeland. So the list is really pretty endless if you think about sort of a major potential conflict. And that's why we need as many voices around the table as we can.
Michael, E. (2026, October 6). Watch CNBC's full interview with Pentagon's Emil Michael [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2992732/
MLA
Emil Michael. "Watch CNBC's full interview with Pentagon's Emil Michael." CNBC Television, 6 Oct. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2992732/.
BibTeX
@misc{michael2026_2992732,
author = {Emil Michael},
title = {Watch CNBC's full interview with Pentagon's Emil Michael},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2992732/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
