​“Welcome to Starbase, Texas,” Elon Musk said from the stage Monday night, as the crowd whooped. “This is a city. It’s actually legally a city that thanks to the hard work of the SpaceX team, we built out of nothing. And it’s now a gigantic rocket manufacturing system. For people out there who are curious to see it, we’re actually on a public highway, so you can come and visit. Drive down the road and see the epic hardware. I think this is the first time that a rocket development program has actually been on a public highway.”

​Musk was hosting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon leadership, currently traveling the country to defense industry manufacturing locations as part of an “Arsenal of Freedom Tour,” a tour name that I believe the War Department stole from Ted Nugent.

War wasn’t exactly on Musk’s mind as he introduced Hegseth. “We want to make Star Trek real,” he said. “We want to make Starfleet Academy real, so that it’s not always science fiction. But one day, the science fiction turns to science fact. And we have spaceships, going through space, big spaceships, with people going to other planets, going to the moon, and ultimately going beyond our star system to other star systems, where we may meet aliens. Or discover long-dead alien civilizations. I don’t know, but…we want to go. And we want to see what’s happening, and we want to have epic futuristic spaceships with lots of people in ’em, traveling to places we’ve never been before.”

This is somewhat ironic, because the new Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series has come under fire from Trek-favorable critics for being too woke even by modern Trek standards, full of overweight aliens, middle-aged female captains wearing glasses and ambisexual youth. That show stands in direct opposition to what Hegseth said he wanted from the War Department at a Monday afternoon speech at the Lockheed Martin headquarters in Fort Worth:

“No more DEI, no more dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, social justice or political correctness,” he said. “We are done with that. We are UNLEASHING the warfighter to be ready, trained, disciplined, accountable and LETHAL.”

Hegseth didn’t repeat the same stump speech at SpaceX on Monday night. They’re calling it the “Technological Dominance at the War Department” speech, and though it sometimes got bogged down into the weeds, explaining in detail levels of bureaucratic organization of interest to only the people directly involved, it was still a remarkable performance.

Hegseth forcefully called out an “archaic” military-industrial complex as having a “risk-averse culture that prevents us from offering our warfighters the best resources.” “This ends today,” he said. He offered up a plan to accelerate “artificial intelligence, quantum, hypersonics and long range drones… space capabilities, directed energy and biotechnology.” The War Department, he said, was the exact opposite of SpaceX. He announced the abolition of committees and other bureaucratic structures that stifled innovation.

Musk’s time in Washington clearly had an effect on our WarSec. From now on, Hegseth said, his department would be an “AI-first department.” “We will win by discovering entirely new ways of fighting,” he said. Our adversaries will tremble in the face of technological innovations approved by our streamlined bureaucracy that will no longer be a bureaucracy. “No sacred cows,” he said. “No exceptions.”

This was a serious speech by a serious man, but it was seriously not Star Trek, whose entire premise is based on progressive cooperation among nations, races and interstellar species. That may be what Elon Musk wants, but it’s definitely not what Pete Hegseth wants. His vision, while fully aware of the need for the US to stay on top of the rapidly-changing technological landscape, is way more Starship Troopers than Starfleet Academy.

“The cycle never stops, always iterating,” he said. “One system, one purpose. Speed to the fight. We are preparing to win the future.”

Hegseth plans to boldly go where no man has gone before. As long as those men are American. And aren’t dudes in dresses.