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Musk and Hegseth vow to β€œmake Star Trek real” but miss the show’s lessons

14 January 2026 at 18:43

This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted their desire to β€œmake Star Trek real”—while unconsciously reminding us of what the utopian science fiction franchise is fundamentally about.

Their Tuesday event was the latest in Hegseth’s ongoing β€œArsenal of Freedom” 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.)

Neither Musk nor Hegseth seemed to recall that the β€œArsenal of Freedom” phraseβ€”at least in the context of Star Trekβ€”is 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 made the connection, however.)

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