Bulwark Takes - Command Post: Hegseth’s Generals Gave Him a Dire Warning About the Iran War

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

The USS Abraham Lincoln finally returns to port after nearly 300 days at sea—and the visible wear and tear is a stark reminder of the strain being placed on the U.S. military.Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) discuss the Navy’s mounting readiness challenges, the Pentagon’s purge of senior Army leaders, and the departure of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. They also break down what leaked Pentagon orders reveal about commanders’ concerns over the sustainability of ongoing operations in Iran and why the warnings coming from inside the military deserve attention.Plus: Trump’s potential Navy secretary pick, and the Pentagon’s bizarre new plan to fix defense acquisition with a “Shark Tank”-style competition.Read Mark Hertling’s reporting and analysis: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/leaks-from-hegseth-orders-book-warning-risk-iran-war-hormuz-military-commanders-munitionsFor a limited time, Tempo is offering our listeners 60% off your first box! Go to https://TempoMeals.com/BulwarkTakes

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bullwork. Welcome to another command post on the Bullwark takes feed. I am joined, as always, by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, and we have a ton to talk about today. General, how are you doing? A ton. We have more than a ton. We have a long ton, short ton and all sorts of other things to talk about, Ben. So let's get to it right away.

We've got to start with the breaking news, which is that after more than almost 300 days at sea, the USS Abraham Lincoln finally pulled into port in Thailand. and we have pictures of what that ship looks like and it doesn't look great. It does not look great. Lots of visible rust on the outside of the hall. It doesn't look like it's been really cleaned in a while. You know, it's seaworthy, it's sailing. But you've talked a lot about how these deployments

and the sort of improvisational nature of the war in Iran is taking a load, not only on the people deployed on that ship, but on things like maintenance and training. And this shows the cost and maintenance. That ship's going to need a long time. It's a lot of rusts to scrub off. And, you know, in the meantime,

that's one less carrier we have available at a time when, you know, we had to redeploy our carrier permanently based in the Pacific back to the Middle East. We're running a little low. And, yeah, what do you make when you see these pictures? You know, first of all, it's obvious what they show, Ben.

And it's an informational power picture that our enemies around the world are going to say, this is the American Navy. They will use that shot repeatedly. And you would expect a ship that's been at sea for almost a year to look like that, especially when it's conducting the kind of operations that the Lincoln has been doing. But that's the outer symbol. You know, what we don't know is what's going on inside that ship in terms of maintenance, repair and requirements that it's going to need a dry dock because that's what happens to all the

aircraft carriers that come in from a long deployment they go into dry dock and they get maintained so this will be brand spanking new in a short period of time but what i will say is i know the navy's capability they can only turn one aircraft carrier at a time in dry dock and we're starting to pack them up a little bit but you also don't see what's happening to the aircraft when you have that many flight hours. You can't see the rust on the airplanes, although I suspect they're there because they're experiencing the saltwater too. I once lived at the beach, and I can tell you what that'll do to anything metal. So how many of those airplanes, those usually about 90 airplanes that are on that aircraft carrier? What kind of repair are they going to need? And how is that going to

affect the readiness of the U.S. Navy in terms of being able to launch platforms against our enemies? Yeah, well said. And just a reminder, something that we've been talking about for a long time, the Lincoln has pulled into port. Several of the ships in its strike group are still at sea. They were not allowed to go home. They were ordered to remain in the Middle East. So whatever signs of wear and tear, the Lincoln is showing, those other ships in that strike group, those destroyers and cruisers are still amassing that wear and tear. Yeah, and I'll just add one more thing, Ben. We're talking about the metal on ships. What we're not talking about is the human beings. You know, what is the state of morale? What is the state of training? You know, when you go to sea, I mean, even Army guys in combat, we, you know, the last time as in combat, we developed our own training range to pull people offline and do what we call re-green them, get them back into the standards and the requirements of active combat. When you put sailors that long at sea doing 12-hour shifts, 24-7, 296 or whatever it is, days in a row, go, there's not only morale problems, there's training issues, there's psychological issues, there's social issues. You know, I saw a picture of some of the sailors coming off the ship and going into a port call in Thailand. You know, they look tired.

I mean, just taking a look at them, they look tired. I'm sure they're happy to be off the ship with their bags and getting ready to get a meal and do whatever else sailors do when they get in a port, which are a lot of things. still, you know, it takes a toll on human beings when you're that long in combat and in that long at sea. Certainly does. Okay. So we have a ton of more topics to get to.

Another evergreen topic for us is the Secretary of Defense going down and then I shouldn't say interfering because he has the legal right to do it. But involving himself, let's say, in promotion lists pretty far down the chain of command. We have a story from NBC that. Hegset has removed the names of at least six army officers from a list who are going to be promoted to two-star general. Several of them, it sounds like, were logisticians. That is to say, people who are in charge of logistics. As we have said many times of this podcast, amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.

I'm the amateur. You're the professional. So when you see that it sounds like the logisticians are being taken off these promotion lists, what does that say to you? Yeah, well, two things it says, Ben. When we were talking about the one-star list last week, that usually consists of between 30 and 32 officers out of literally hundreds of kernels that are promoted. When you're talking about promotion to two stars from the one-star list, you're talking about 18 normally every year of all different specialties and dynamics characteristics, both tacticians, operators, special operators, intelligence, logisticians, public affairs, all those kind of folks. So when you take six

off of a list of 18, that's a third if my math isn't wrong. And that's a lot. Yeah. Especially if the rumor is true that most of them are logisticians, that really affects the force. Let's harken back to the pictures of the aircraft carrier we just showed. All the services are having those kind of things. and when you take the key leaders at the two-star levels from logisticians, you're affecting the force. So it's just another. And by the way, you mentioned how the secretary does have the ability to do this. This also kind of links to the secretary Driscoll story. Because the secretary of the services, Driscoll is the secretary of the army, their sole responsibility is to run those boards.

That's one of their key things. They provide guidance to those boards. They tell them how many numbers to pick. They tell them what qualities and characteristics to look for. They look for different leaders and different approaches. So when HECS, or excuse me, when Driscoll said, he wasn't letting me do my job and it wasn't just the people he's taken off the list, he's affecting me in terms of how I'm doing my job. This is what we're talking about.

Yeah, I want to talk about this more later because we're definitely going to talk about Driscoll of what's going on with the Army, specifically. But is it fair to say that when we see combatant commanders removed, the commander in charge of Pacific Command or Southern Command or the ground component commander in Europe, when we see them removed, that's about what's going on right now. And what units in those areas are going to be ordered to do, when we see people removed from promotionless or when we see the Secretary of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Army being prematurely pushed out, that's about what the military is going to like. like five, look like five, 10, 15 years from now.

Yeah. Each one of those two stars have the capability of serving five more years, as do the one stars. They usually get two assignments in those jobs, and they're either asked to leave

or they're promoted to the next rank of three stars. So this is also the fodder for three stars and four star generals as well for key institutions. So this is taking a look at five to 10 to even 15 years out.

I was promoted to one star in 1990. or I was on a selection list in 1999. I served until 2013 rising up the rank. So you can see this is a long-term issue for those guys that would be even pulled off. But the other thing I'd say, Ben, just to give it a military twist, everybody watches these lists. It's not just the folks who are getting promoted that say, woo-hoo, I'm promoted. Captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, sergeants major say, hey, who's coming out?

Because I served with that guy once. deserves to be on it. And what I'll tell you, from my experience over 13 years as a general and almost four decades in uniform, when those lists come out, you look at them very closely and you say, these are all great people. Oh, wait, there's one guy who's kind of a dirtbag and he should have never been promoted. And I worked with him once and he shouldn't be on the list. Well, okay, every once in a while you get a guy like that. But there's usually universal approval of these lists by the entire force because they know these guys and gals they know who they are they know what they've done so enough of my soapbox on this one it affects more than the people who are pulled from the list

so uh matt if we can you put together this great graphic of all of the pentagon i don't even think this is all this is a partial list of all of the officers who have officers and civilian officials who have been forced out since haggs that took over at the pentagon including some very accomplished and well respected people um and this doesn't count as well-respected people um and this doesn't count the people who were denied promotion, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around what happens when there just aren't senior leaders, when there are just so many vacancies, right? I mean, the command structure is designed so you always have the next person who's in line to step up, and it happens automatically, right? If there's no secretary of the army, there's an undersecretary

of the army. If there's no chief of staff, there's a vice chief of staff. If there's no commander, there's a deputy commander. If there's no lieutenant, then there's the, you know, sergeant of the platoon or whatever. But what happens when, like, we're going to have a third fewer two stars in the Army? Does that mean just like we're going to have a bunch of one stars taking over their jobs, a bunch of colonels taking over their jobs? What happens if you lose so much leadership? Well, remember, Secretary Hexas sent from the very beginning that he wanted to eliminate

generals and admirals. We had way too many of them. But, Ben, I got to tell you, and there's always this comparison. Well, in World War II, we had this. and now we have this many and they're much more in, you know, for a smaller force, that's not true. You know, sometimes those active generals from World War I are the active generals. There were a lot of reserve divisions that also had general officers. But it's the positions that you're talking about.

Do you have the experience and the credentials to deal in those positions? And I'm looking across this picture that Matt put together for us, and I know about half of the people on here. and they are some great ones. And this list doesn't even include some of the other ones that I know that were taken off the list. You know, people like the top two on the left, J.P. McGee and D.A. Sims, I served with. McGee was in combat with me in Iraq. He was one of my best battalion commanders as a lieutenant colonel.

D.A. Sims was a regimental commander that I knew very well and that my son served with as well. These are two guys who were literally buying and were considered to be the next chief of staff of the Army. So, you know, they were selected for three-star rank and probably because they were being positioned into the four-star ranks of the military. And they were excellent in combat, excellent in peacetime, smart minds, and very transformational in their approach. So again, I'm preaching one more time. But it's the fact that you know all of these people are just phenomenal and they have dedicated a lifetime to their country. And Ben, I'll say one more thing. They could have been making a whole lot more money on the outside.

These people didn't do it for the cash or for the, you know, the kudos of being a general. They did it to serve their nation. So I'll just leave it at that. And it's just a damn shame. It is a damn shame. And, you know, I shudder to think of what these messages are sending inside the military. You know, Hegsef refuses to comment on why he makes these specific decisions regarding promotion within the force or why he forces certain people out. He says, you know, we don't comment a person on others.

That's not fair. But it's pretty clear that it's not just that he sort of doesn't like. what he considers woke officers. He doesn't like, I guess, people who think too much, but he also doesn't like the officers who serve with them. And that some of these people are getting forced out these promotion lists, maybe just because of who they were assigned to work for before. Right. Correct.

Hey, Ben, can I do one more picture off this list? Because I just noticed it. On the bottom right hand, there's a black officer. That's Major General Bill Green. He was the chief of chaplains for the U.S. Army. And when he was told to retire, or asked to retire, it sent a shockwave to the force because that guy was chosen to be the chief of chaplains because he is the most solid character that you can find and the most spiritual leader. He was once an artilleryman, got out of the army and then came back in as a chaplain because he wanted to serve after he went to divinity school. Rose to the highest ranks, he was my chaplain on two occasions, and I can't sing more praises of him.

But you kind of got to ask yourself, why? Why are you asking the chief of chaplains to leave? And perhaps it's because I think he had a more holistic view of the spiritual nature of the force, not an evangelical approach, but understanding that all soldiers are very different in their faith journeys. Yeah, it really is a shame that these people are being drummed out of the surface as unceremoniously as they have been. And speaking of people who are leaving, you mentioned this earlier, but Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll announced that today is his last full day as Secretary of the Army. People have been whispering about this for a while. There's one part of this I want to highlight, because I think this is what's really important to understand about this.

he says, I had the privilege of working to modernize and accelerate how the army man's, trains, and equips the most lethal fighting force on the face of the earth. We could not have made the progress we did with that sort of secretary, Headsatheye group, people go to the president's property opportunity, blah, blah, blah. So this is what he was focused on, right? Is modernizing the army. He was, according to reports, trying to transform the way the army fights wars to deal with things like advanced electronic warfare and drones.

things that we've seen in the war, Ukraine, you know, drones and missile combinations, as we've seen in Ukraine and in Iran, and to accelerate how the army man's trains that equips the force. And that is apparently what got him into hot water with Defense Secretary Hegsef. So when you see this, what is the first thought that occurs to you? Well, first of all, it's a class act that he sent this out. Secondly, you were absolutely right. He was all about transformation. And that's why he was such a great partner with General Randy George, who was the former. Chief of Staff of the Army. When George was taken out and General Laniv went from

from HECS deputy to being the vice chief, I think the thought by Secretary HECSeth was, hey, we'll just swing him into this position to follow General George. Well, Secretary Diskoll stood up against that as well as some of the other polls from the promotion list. But you got to remember what was Driscoll's background. First of all, he was a rich guy. He was a hedge fund manager. But before that, he volunteered to be in the Army, went through OCS, served as a armored cavalry officer, which is close to my heart, but also spent a tour in the same location I did in northern Iraq as a cavalry platoon leader. So this guy, Tanker went to Ranger School, did all the things that Hexeth didn't do. And he was good friends with Vice President Vance. So I think you,

see the dynamics of personality, first of all, but also the fact that he, Driscoll has a further affinity to the Army, to the force he was asked to be secretary of, and had a better feel for it, even though he was a young guy, very young guy. I think he was 41 or 42. That's young for a secretary of the Army. But he was making some progress along with General George. And, you know, dynamic? Sure. When he was asked to leave and he told the President, what was going on in the army. And the president allegedly responded with, oh, gee, I didn't know that in terms of the fact

that 20 general officers had been asked to retire. How can a president not know that? Is that mean that the president is just uninvolved? Or does it mean that Hexeth's just doing things on his own as the Secretary of Defense that kind of run counter to what our Constitution says? Yeah, it's also surprising to me that Secretary Driscoll went and told Trump that as he's on his way out the door,

like you didn't get a chance to mention that earlier at any point. You didn't think it was worth bringing up before you decided to leave? Okay, guess not. I don't know how tough it is to get in touch with President Trump. I did hear earlier, I guess, in the spring or summer, that Trump's personal phone number was making the rounds and random people were calling him and he was picking up. So maybe Dristle could have tried that.

But whatever, that would have just been me. Yeah. Yeah, I won't comment on that. But a secretary of the Army isn't going to have a direct link to the president. That's all about going through your chain of command and doing the sect out. So the fact that he went to see the president in and of itself is a pretty bold move, cotton, you know, as it was once said in a movie. Yeah, I understand the reference. So I do want to ask you about this because you served in the army during a period of, I would say, several transformations.

You started, you know, sort of late Cold War when we're talking about, you know, big armored thrust through Central Europe. you served in the Gulf War, which was the introduction of, you know, electronically assisted warfare, precision strike on a large scale, electronic warfare. The jointness of the Big Five that the Army had purchased, you know, the attack helicopters, the new tanks, the new Bradley's, the new artillery pieces, all those kind of things. Yeah. Exactly. And you even, you know, gotten to the drone age by the time you retired, Predator and Reaper drones

and that kind of thing were pretty common. So would you look at the kind of transformation that Driscoll and especially General George were trying to affect in the Army? How important do you think that kind of thing is for the Army now? Oh, it's critical. You know, you're talking about just advances that are unimaginable in terms of evolution. It's not a revolution. A lot of people are saying it's a revolution in war. There's never a revolution in warfare.

But this is the equivalent. I once told an audience, this is the equivalent. of the introduction of the mini ball during the Civil War. So you took a musket ball, which was round. It's kind of like throwing a baseball. And you spiraled it out so you could shoot the mini ball named after Charles, Claude Mene, a French guy who invented it. And it spirals like a football.

So it can go longer. It can hit more accurately. It can, you know, reached 400 meters versus 100 meters when you're on a Civil War battle. So that changes everything. It changes formations. It changes resupply. It changes the way you conduct warfare. Drones are doing the same thing on a much exponential approach.

They are handling things. Now, they are in combination with other things. Electronic warfare, increased capabilities on our generation of jets, the kinds of things we use for intelligence, which is off the chart. So it is a piece of it, but it's a very important piece. And that not only affects, you know, everybody's worried about how are we acquiring drones. That's important. But it also affects your leadership, your management of the rest of the force, your doctrine

and how you do things, your personnel, how many people do you need to do that? What kind of formations do we need to have drone forces in? And it affects everything in terms of how an army goes to war. So, yeah, it's a pretty big deal. Yeah, it's a great case study about when the, when the, when the machine gun came around. Again, a technology that the very early

examples were during the American Civil War with the Gatling gun and things like that. And the European armies took a look at that. We're sort of trying to figure out what to do with it. And it was a very fateful decision that the German army decided this is basically like a better version of the rifle. And we're going to give it to the infantry.

And we're going to give every fifth infantryman is going to become a machine gun team or whatever it was. And the French decided, oh, this is more like artillery. And that changed not only how they use the guns, but how they organized their forces, how they thought about how battles would be conducted. And it made a big difference in the earliest, I mean, eventually everyone adapted, right? But one of the reasons the Germans were able to advance into France at the beginning of World War I was that the French weren't as prepared for the way machine gun was going to change warfare.

And that's exactly what we're seeing with the kinds of drones that are being used in Iran and Ukraine right now. And the people who are taking that change the most seriously as of tomorrow, we're no longer going to be in the Army. Correct. That's exactly right. And we had a unit that was experimenting with them in Italy and had connections with the Ukrainian forces. And Secretary Hexath decided to stop that.

So I don't understand some of the things that are going on from my simple mind having been in the military for a long time and understanding how things work, it just seems counterintuitive some of the things that we're doing. I want to talk about one more story recently. I think we already talked about, but it's worth reminding people of. And then we'll take a quick break. But there was a test between an American tank unit using the M1 Abrams and a Ukrainian drone unit

to see what would happen if a American tank unit, the way we've been training tanks for decades, came up against a unit that had real recent frontline experience with drones. And the drone unit won hands down, no question. It doesn't mean that tanks are over. I think a lot of that is oversold. Tanks are adapted. If you look at the first tanks of World War II, nothing like tanks now.

But it does mean we've got to learn some things about how to defend tanks against drones. And I don't know. Maybe we're just going to bury our heads in the sand and figure we won't be woke, so then we'll win. I'll go back to your historical examples of the story of the German Blitzkrieg during World War II. There were still those in the United States,

Army that were poo-pooing the tanks after Eisenhower first did their trials at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the field there. And there were a lot of people who wanted to stick with horses because they were more reliable than the tanks breaking down. So that's an example of every time there's an evolution in warfare, there are a lot of people who say, ah, that's not going to affect us. But the transformational people, the people who are smart, some of the people that were on that photo that Matt showed a little bit ago, they're looking at long-term issues.

and trying to figure out what's best for the force. And they know it's important because a lot of money goes into purchasing these kinds of things. And it's really part of a plan for 10 years out, 20 years out, and what the best guess is of the future in terms of warfare. We're going to talk about a couple of those themes after this quick break. Brought you by Tempo Meals. Now during the week, my schedule is pretty nonstop. And when I'm busy, eating healthy is usually the first thing that slips.

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of what was in Secretary of Defense Heggseth's orders book. You also wrote about this for us, giving a little more content. so people can understand exactly what this means. The leaks from Hexeth's book are a warning. I want to talk about this story in two different ways. First, I want to talk about the substance of the leak and what was reportedly in the book and what it means. And then I want to talk about the fact of the leak itself and how to understand that.

But let's start with, you explain what the order's book is. You had a bunch of commanders, major commanders, like combat commanders for major parts of the world, issuing a non-concur about continuing operations as they have been in Iran. Do I have that right? You do. And what you saw was, and the people that submit input to this order's book, it's not always seen by the Secretary of Defense, are all of the four stars of the major command. And they say, hey, here's my area and here's what it looks like today. So it's really an assessment of what's going on based on their contingency plans, the things they're being asked to do in their area. So it isn't just the combatant commanders. It could be the material commander. It could

be the person that does space. It could, you know, it could be a variety of people that are all commenting on their readiness and how they see their readiness contributing to the overall global posture. If I can interrupt you a quick, one of the people who did non-concur was Hegseth's favorite, the chief of naval operations. So we saw the photos of the USS Abraham Lincoln earlier. He's saying, hey, if I were you, boss, knowing what I know about the Navy and the need to keep the Navy ready to fight five, ten, fifteen years down the line, I would not keep doing this. Yeah. And part of the reason I think, I don't know what this is, but I'll commit to it, is, you know, the chief of naval operations doesn't have to just worry about the ships.

He has to worry about the facilities that are repairing the ships and the morale of the sailors. So he's saying from all perspectives, from a holistic view, this is what I think and it's unsustainable. So I non-concurred with doing what we're doing, continuing to do what we're doing. But you have not only the combatant commanders and those who support them, but you also have all the service chiefs, like the chief of naval operations, like the chief of staff of the Army, like the commandant of the Marine Corps. And they will tell you primarily how it's affecting the force and their ability to man-equip and train and sustain the force that they provide to the combatant commanders. The combatant commander says, hey, this is what I want.

give it to me and a bunch of people then give it to them other combatant commanders and the chief of the services so when you saw the leak that came out that had several non-concurs with continual operations in the Middle East it tells me that it's not just what's going on at the straight of humus it's also how it's affecting everybody else because they're getting people pull people and equipment pulled from them I'll give you an example during the Afghan Iraq war period, Ben. When we were fighting in Afghanistan initially, they were basically getting everything we had. Overhead platforms, intelligence services, any soldier that they wanted to get on the ground, Marine, whatever, airplanes by the bushel. When all that started to shift toward the war

plan with Iraq to attack into Iran, all of that stuff started to shift as well, shift as well to Iraq. I said Iran. I'm sorry. I meant Iraq. all started to shift to Iraq. So the folks in Afghanistan were like, hey, we're in a middle of a fight here. You're taking important stuff from us. We'll continue on, but I'm telling you, we're being depleted a little bit. That's what's happening right now on a much larger scale, because we're talking about basically conventional operations in Iran with a whole lot of support infrastructure in terms of intelligence,

missiles and aircraft. So yeah, it is huge when you have not only combatant commanders from other areas non-conquer, but when the chief of the services start to non-concur and say, I can't fix this when you return these broken things to me in a timely manner, that's dangerous. Yeah, just to give an example, I've heard that one of the big issues with the simultaneous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq was helicopters. Afghanistan, very mountainous. It's a lot of the only ways to resupply, for example, a forward operating base at the top of a mountain is by helicopter. Big helicopters, right.

If all the helicopters suddenly need to go to Iraq, I guess we're going to build our forward operating bases down in the valley where the roads are. And then the Taliban is going to get the high ground. And that happened in a bunch of cases and resulted in not only lost territory, but additional American and allied casualties. Yeah, there are always those second and third order effects that you don't think about when you're stripping. And the Iraq to, I'm sorry, the Afghan to Iraq transfer of drones to back then, the early number of drones that we had, the reapers and some of the bigger ones, it was pretty detrimental to what we were doing in Afghanistan. Yeah, so we will be feeling these repercussions for a long time. Now, probably to talk about the second half of this. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon was very angry that this kind of information had leaked.

they were specifically angry, though, at the journalists who reported on it. They did not express as much anger at the people who are clearly, if not some of these general officers themselves, the people in very responsible positions of the Pentagon who are, I mean, what is this? Besides, like, ringing the alarm bell as loud as you can, right? To leak this kind of information to the press signals that people are going like, hey, we're headed for an iceberg. You got to, the captain's got to pay attention. Yeah, and I think whoever the leakers were where they were well-meaning, and I'm caught between, you know, the proverbial dog and the fire hiding on this one, because I'm not sure which way I want to go.

But it is a crime to leak classified information, no doubt about that. But whoever did it took the risk of saying, this is so important. And I would also add, and no one's listening in the position of power that we need to. to get this to the press to let it be sanitized and see some sunlight. And that's what they did. And the press is willing to print this kind of stuff. They say, yeah, this is important to the American people. Now, if I have seen situations when I was in the Pentagon, the one tour I was in the Pentagon, where a piece of information was leaked. And the Secretary of Defense literally called the newspaper and said, could you hold this story? Because it will put

lies in danger and the press said yeah sure we'll do that we'll give it a couple of days well can you give it three days okay yes we will but then we're printing it that happens all the time but in this particular case it was obviously so dangerous that whoever leaked it said we've been ringing this bell for a while and ain't nobody listening so we're going to go to the american press and rightfully the press printed it i think yeah i think that's right and you know i wouldn't be surprised to hear weeks, months from now, that there's been some sort of internal crackdown within the Pentagon, more investigations,

more hooking people up to polygraphs, to see if they're the leaker. That's not going to solve the problem. We've talked about this. Going after the bad news itself doesn't change the underlying facts that generate the bad news. All right.

We have two more bad stories to get to really quick. And then I'm just exhausted. By the way, Ben, can I say one more thing about the book? There are a lot of people that compile that thing. I mean, you know, they get information from all the other people, but on the joint staff, there's some people that are compiling it. And I'm sure there were a bunch of people that said, holy S, this is bad. Why are people not reporting this?

That's my take on this. But there are a lot of people that see the input, not a whole lot that see the final product, but you can get a lot of trend lines from just the input to that. Oh, that's really interesting. Okay. So we have to talk about this very briefly. One of the acting positions, we haven't had a secretary of the Navy in a while. We have an acting secretary of the Navy.

His name is Hung Cow. He was previously a, I believe, twice failed candidate for Congress in Virginia. President Trump is now planning on nominating him to be Secretary of the Navy in a Senate-approved position. He is really not qualified for that role. He did spend a career in the Navy. hired as a captain, I believe. But he does not have the sort of managerial or political or industrial or, frankly, I would say, like just basic judgment chops to be a service secretary.

During one of his campaigns, he said that he was very concerned about witchcraft. He's a bit of a kook. I don't imagine that the Senate is going to be in a huge rush to confirm him. They haven't been in a huge rush to confirm General Lenev as Chief of Staff of the Army. They don't seem to be very happy on Capitol Hill with Hagsath anyway because he generally stonewals them. So I don't know what the rush is to confirm Hunkow as Secretary of the Navy, especially considering he's acting anyway. So what's your take on this? Well, I don't know anything about retired Captain Howe, but what I will tell you is I harken back then,

and I'm looking at it more and more on a daily basis. We ought to republish it in the bulwark when a long, long time ago, it seems like decades, but it was only about a year when I wrote an article about the requirements for the Secretary of Defense. I was just thinking about that article this morning. Yeah. And, you know, we didn't know who it was going to be at the time, but it is a tough job. You not only have to know the service, but you have to be a pretty good businessman for acquisitions. You have to be a man of character, a person of character.

You have to understand the service you're over watching. You have to understand the troops that you're overseeing and their family members. And it is one of the biggest, the Secretary of Defense is one of the biggest jobs in the Army. You need some business experience. You need some service experience. You need some dedication and all those things. I wish we would start applying those kind of qualifications to the people that we're putting in charge of the defense department. department because those are the things that are required, especially when you're in a war.

So just saying, hey, this guy spent time in the Navy and he's a great guy, let's put him in office. Does he have, like you say, the experience? I don't know. I don't know if Mr. Cow has the business experience or the futuristic. I do know that Dan Driscoll had it and he was a young guy, but I don't know if this guy does. We're also going to need to take a look at who might replace Driscoll as well. there's some names being floated, which are almost head-banging in terms of how they might affect the services. So again, when you've got the secretary of a various service, you know, running the service, literally giving guidance as a civilian authority to a bunch of guys who have, guys and gals

who have spent decades in service to their country in uniform, they kind of need to know what's going on. Yeah, I agree with that. Speaking of knowing what's going on, this is just a funny story. This is just ridiculous. So we've talked a lot about acquisitions. I can't believe them actually going to talk about this. We've talked a lot about acquisitions.

I don't know where you're going. Apparently, the Small Business Administration has a plan to help solve the Defense Department's decades-long acquisitions problem. Shark tank. Shark tank. It's Shark tank. That's their idea. I mean, this is one of like the most ingrained, difficult, complicated, politically fraught, bureaucratic, problems in the entire federal government

is how the Defense Department buys things. And their solution is Shark Tank. Matt, I think we have a clip of this of Kelly Leffler, Small Business Administrator. Can we play that? Put together a contest. And the judges are? Nikki Minaj, Grant Cardone,

Joe Gebia, and it'll be hosted by the great Dean Kane. Wow. So, and you have already found the small businesses that are finalists to win potentially a million dollars? We have five finalists. The competition takes place September 18th in Washington, and we're hoping to get it out to everyone. And it's a really exciting time.

Look, President Trump understands that small business is big business. He tells me all the time. I was looking at some of the businesses, Ben, they're not familiar to me. So, okay. All right. I mean, look, they could be very good small manufacturers that are part of the defense industrial base, and kudos to them for that. But also, a million dollars?

I mean, what's the pending on budgets? like $800 billion a year. And they're sitting, well, we're going to have a Shark Tank episode in D.C. And September 18th for a million dollars. I mean, come on. I had, I shouldn't, I probably shouldn't say this one here. I had an MBA student in my class last year who actually was on, she says she can't say the show because of non-disclosure,

but it was something similar to what Ms. Loughler is trying to, and she actually won. Oh. And her device, well, I, I can't, I'll give her away, so I won't dime her out. But she won three million dollars based on the fact that she sold her product on, and it was an interesting product, not something that you would put in a high speed generation six jet or a submarine, but good honor for that. But I'm not sure Shark Tank is going to enamor anybody in the acquisition community in terms of a way of doing business. and a million bucks ain't going to bring the Lockheeds or the Boeings to the table. So that's just my thought on this whole thing.

But great idea, Kelly. All right. Well, I'm glad we got to end on a laugh because that is such a laugh. Like, okay, great. You do that. Sure. The only thing better this week, I think, Ben, was the meme that the president posted this morning of a bald eagle attacking a Canadian goose.

That's the only thing better than Ms. Loughkeler's shark. idea. Great. Love that. We live in interesting times, don't we? Oh, yeah. That's our curse. But it's a blessing to be able to at least vent our spleen together every week.

So thanks for joining me for another episode. Shark tank. Great. Hey, maybe, Ben, before we go, maybe we should do like a shark tank from our listeners on best ideas for the defense and security community. What do you think? You know what? They should...

I'm surprising you on this. I'm sorry for that. But I think we should do that. In the comments, I will go and I will, I volunteer to be the judge. We should nominate people. We can do some research. Nominate people for all the vacant roles. We need your secretary of the army, secretary of the Navy.

Note to be the secretary of a service. You do not have to have served in that service. Sometimes you can have served in a different service. That's okay. It's allowed. Sometimes it's even helpful. You know, you have a different. a frame of mind.

Yeah. We're going to need, we don't need a chairman of the joint chiefs. We have one of those. We're going to need an Army chief of staff. We have a chief of naval operations. I don't know. We're going to need a chief of chaplains.

We can just conduct a board, you know, to select these people instead of having them pull up. Yeah. And you can be Mr. Wonderful on this whole event, okay? Oh, God. Please, Mark Cuban at least. Ugh. Okay, yeah.

In the comments on Substack, we'll go and we'll do our own promotions, board for the military, see if we can make things a little better. General, thank you so much. You got to laugh, Ben, right? Okay, thanks. Good. Have a great week. You too.