Defense policy
February 10, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He holds that when interest payments on the national debt eclipse defense spending, great powers struggle to maintain military strength and global influence. As US debt service surpasses defense outlays for the first time since the 1930s, Ferguson’s Law offers a stark warning about the fiscal foundations of American national power. Hoover has posted the video below expounding
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November 9, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times headlines: “Hegseth is purging military leaders and offering little explanation.” Subhed: “The moves to fire or sideline generals and admirals are without precedent in recent decades and have rattled the top brass.” I think the Times totally fails to understand that most of us will see this as good news. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or sidelined at least two dozen generals and admirals over
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October 21, 2025 — John Hinderaker
One of the most shocking instances of malfeasance in modern American history is our allowing ourselves to become dependent on Communist China for the minerals we need to operate our economy and provide for the national defense. You can read about that issue here. Our dependence on China for critical minerals represents, in my opinion, the number one threat both to our national security and to our economic future. Happily,
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October 15, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The Ukraine war has destroyed Europe’s complacency and restored a sense of urgency to national defense. This has been manifested in many ways. Today’s London Times reports on one significant instance, relating to Britain’s undersea cables. While this particular issue is specific to that country, I have little doubt that we in the U.S. face similar infrastructure issues: Defence grandees have secretly warned the prime minister that he is running
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September 25, 2025 — John Hinderaker
In what may be an unprecedented move, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has summoned top military brass to Washington for a meeting: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will meet with top military leaders next week, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday, following a report that the rare gathering will include hundreds of generals and admirals. “The Secretary of War will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean
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September 5, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In its March 22, 1969 number, the New Yorker turned over its Talk of the Town column to a speech given by Harvard Professor George Wald at a March 4 “antiwar teach-in” at MIT. Those were the days, my friend. Professor Wald taught biology at Harvard. He had won the 1967 Nobel Prize in the field of physiology or medicine along with Ragnar Granit and Keffer Hartline for his discovery
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July 28, 2025 — John Hinderaker
A year or two ago, the producer of a documentary film reached out to me. The film was to be about Matthew Lohmeier, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was cashiered from the military because he was not on board with DEI, and said on a podcast that Marxism was infiltrating the Air Force. He also wrote a book called Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of
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July 14, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Second-tier wars have often been proving grounds for new weapons and techniques. Thus, to cite just one example, the American Civil War was followed closely by military leaders in Europe. Such is the case with the Russia/Ukraine war. That war has featured extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles, i.e., drones. Many believe that the use of drones renders some of our own military doctrines obsolete. Fox News reports that Secretary
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March 23, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The Democratic Party’s judicial attack on the Trump administration and the Executive Branch is centered on the federal district court for the District of Columbia. One of those judges, Ana Reyes, has issued a preliminary injunction preventing the Department of Defense from implementing the President’s executive order barring transgender people from military service. Judge Reyes, born in Uruguay, was appointed to the federal bench in 2023 by Joe Biden. Wikipedia
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January 28, 2025 — John Hinderaker
A friend sent me a link to this video of an interview with Palmer Luckey, the founder of Anduril Industries, whose company is about to invest $1 billion in Ohio. Anduril manufactures munitions and other defense-related hardware. Luckey talks about the fact that no one goes to a state like California, once the main hub of defense procurement, and he explains what drew his company to Ohio. At one level,
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January 7, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, on his nomination as Secretary of Defense, is scheduled for next week. All indications are that he has the support of Republican senators and will be confirmed, but Elizabeth Warren, the ranking minority member of the committee, isn’t going down without a fight. Or without a last opportunity to smear Hegseth. Yesterday, Warren sent Hegseth a 33-page letter that is
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November 28, 2024 — John Hinderaker
On Monday, Senator Tom Cotton wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, criticizing actions within the Department of Defense that have been reported in the press. I haven’t seen the letter in downloadable form, but I believe this is the complete text: Secretary Austin, I write to express my concern that Pentagon officials are seeking to undermine President Trump’s incoming administration. It appears that partisans and obstructionists inside the Department
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August 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
With “President” Joe Biden continuing his second week of vacation with nothing on his schedule or public calendar, and Kamala Harris hiding out in her own basement, who is running the country? It might appear to be Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, at least on national security matters. It was Austin who announced the re-deployment of another carrier battle group to the Middle East, which, apparently, leaves no U.S. carrier in
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August 21, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
The Biden-Harris administration, Fox News reports, has appointed Sneha Nair as a special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Prior to the appointment, Nair served as a research analyst with the Nuclear Security Program at the Stimson Center. The special assistant earned a masters in geography and international relations from the University of St. Andrews, but there’s more to her. Sneha Nair is co-author of “Queering nuclear weapons: How
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January 9, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
As Scott noted previously, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized for three days before Joe Biden knew anything about it. Austin claimed he “could have done a better job ensuring that the public was informed.” Such an understatement raises more than a few questions. We now know he was being treated for prostate cancer, but neither President Biden nor his staff knew this until today—weeks after Secretary Austin went
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December 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Well, no, of course they don’t. The idea that liberal news outlets might contribute to our national defense, rather than undermining it, is laughable. And yet, here they are: the defense authorization bill is being held hostage to the Democrats’ insistence that the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act” be included in it. Whatever the merits of the JCPA, it has absolutely nothing to do with national defense, and should be
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February 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I don’t have a firm conclusion about just what we should do about the Ukraine crisis (beyond not sending Kamala Harris to Munich to embarrass the country). We ought to arm the Ukrainians with all the weapons they can use (short of nukes), impose serious sanctions on Russia, and perhaps some heavy cyber actions. But it is also worth considering that if Germany won’t stand up with the rest of the
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