WAR TALK: Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump said that a decision to rename the Department of Defense the “Department of War” is likely “going to be made over the next week or so.” He just likes the ring of it, apparently, saying "I'm talking to the people. Everybody likes that. We had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense. The Washington Post says that most likely a name change would require an act of Congress but that the Department of Defense “could not be immediately reached for comment.” One thing is certain, if the rebranding is ordered it is going to be expensive. Military Times reported in 2023 that the renaming of just nine Army bases that had been named for Confederate soldiers – would cost $39 million. (We haven’t seen a price tag yet on what it will cost to undo that name change.) Now imagine the cost of replacing the signage at military installations, offices, and vehicles. Oh, and there will be need to update email addresses, websites, and publications. The cost will easily run into the hundreds of millions.
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MORE THAN JUST A NAME CHANGE: DNI Tulsi Gabbard announced last week that she is continuing her mission to overhaul the ODNI in ways that cut much deeper than just a name change, estimating that staff cuts and consolidations could save taxpayers $700m a year. While many in the national security community agree that the organization that was founded in 2005 to ensure better communication after 9/11 has gotten too bloated, lawmakers are not surprisingly, divided over how to do it. Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the first Trump Administration Sue Gordon is taking aim in the latest edition of her new podcast, Understandable Insights: Information to Intelligence, arguing that “In general, ‘more with less’ is a lie – you’re going to do less with less” said Gordon, putting some of the blame on Congress for not articulating a clear path forward. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re unlikely to get there,” said Gordon. Gabbard says she plans to cut personnel and costs across all 18 of the agencies that make up the Intelligence Community (IC) which could save as much as $1.3 billion a year. Maybe they can use some of that money to help pay for a name change at DoD, eh?
FIGHTING WORDS: Everyone seems to be adopting bellicose language these days. We noticed a story about a recent change of command ceremony in which Marine Corps Major General David Bligh took over as Judge Advocate General of the Navy. The event was notable since Bligh is the first Marine to be the top uniformed lawyer for the Navy since 1878. In his remarks at the assumption of command event according to a Navy press release Bligh said, “We are officers and enlisted men and women in the naval service, who serve with and for our fellow warriors,” adding, “That reality requires us to carry ourselves not just as legal experts, but as warfighters.” Killer lawyers. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
CAN’T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN – Former NSA Director General Tim Haugh (Ret.) has announced that he is joining Ballistic Ventures as a Strategic Advisor in a move that demonstrates the mostly cyber-focused venture firm is playing for keeps. The VC firm claims that capital isn’t enough to win - you need expertise too. (Thank goodness someone gets it). We know who doesn’t get it though – a social media influencer who bragged earlier this year about her role in getting Haugh fired from his job leading both the NSA and Cyber Command (only two of the most important organizations in the world when it comes to ensuring future U.S. national security for all Americans – regardless of their politics). Why didn’t she like him? Because she didn’t think he was ‘loyal enough’ to the president. (Seriously…we’re having flashbacks of the fifth grade right now.) Haugh’s latest move proves that real expertise may be more heavily concentrated than ever in the private sector. Among Ballistic’s list of other impressive advisors: General Paul Nakasone (Ret.), Chris Inglis, Kevin Mandia, Phil Venables and Ted Schlein. Haugh says one of his goals in his new private sector mission is to “work closely with people I trust to solve hard cybersecurity challenges, particularly those issues facing our nation’s critical infrastructure.” Finally, something worth posting about.
DIVULGING SOURCES & METHODS -- NPR is about to drop a new nat-sec podcast, and it’s not your average “two dudes in a basement with a mic” situation. Sources & Methods launching on August 28, is hosted by Mary Louise Kelly, who has spent the past 25 years chasing spooks, grilling generals, and reporting from actual war zones (not just Twitter). The format: think newsroom bull session, but with Pulitzer-level correspondents swapping intel instead of random hot takes. Kelly and her crew are promising to unpack the world’s biggest messes from wars, coups, cyberattacks to rising authoritarianism and climate-driven chaos and will try to answer the big questions: What do we know? How do we know it? And what’s the weirdest thing lurking in our reporters’ notebooks? The pitch from NPR brass: as everyone else cuts foreign coverage, why not double down with Kelly steering the ship because she actually knows what she’s talking about. Our translation: Sources & Methods is NPR flexing its serious-foreign-policy-muscle in podcast form. Episodes drop on Thursdays, so you can sound terrifyingly well-informed during Friday happy hour.
SKWERL AND CHEESE (SERIOUSLY) -- No, not a bad fast-food combo, “Skwerl” and “Cheese” are two down-on-their-luck veterans who decide the obvious career pivot after war is, naturally, stealing a private jet. Sheepdogs, the latest novel by Elliot Ackerman plays like Lethal Weapon if Mel Gibson had a dominatrix girlfriend and Danny Glover was a gas-station cashier with a pregnant wife. Ackerman, a decorated Marine turned novelist, leans into the gallows of humor that vets use to survive both firefights and civilian life. Everyone in this world has at least four nicknames - half assigned by drunk Marines, the other half spat out by a lazy CIA computer. Thus, “Big Cheese” the Afghan ace pilot and “Skwerl” the ex-CIA paramilitary guy (whose spelling skills are as questionable as his post-service career choices) survive gunfights, hostage crises and bad pseudonyms as the novel tackles the weightier questions: What happens to heroes once the war is over? When does necessity make crime feel noble? Ackerman’s literary résumé is stacked with serious war novels (Dark at the Crossing, Green on Blue, and his dystopian trilogy series with Admiral Jim Stavridis, 2034, 2054 and the future-release, 2084), so don’t mistake Sheepdogs for just slapstick with silencers. Behind the absurd nicknames is a darker truth: soldiers outlast their wars, but not always their demons. And yes, Apple TV and Tom Hanks are turning it into a series—because who wouldn’t want to binge-watch Skwerl & Cheese: International Jet Thieves?
UKRAINE HAS ITS VERY OWN DEEP STATE –When rumors swirled that Russia had broken through Ukraine’s defenses on a recent hot summer night, it wasn’t generals who confirmed the news but rather two guys with laptops. The New York Times describes how Ruslan Mykula and Roman Pohorilyi, co-founders of DeepState, an online war map showed Russian forces pushing nearly 10 miles forward. The update, which looked like a pair of rabbit ears on the screen, went viral and Kyiv’s military scrambled elite troops to plug the gap. DeepState has become Ukraine’s unofficial war dashboard, racking up nearly a million views a day. Civilians use it to decide when to flee, mayors mark it up like a football playbook, and even soldiers rely on it when the official army maps prove a little… selective. For all its influence, DeepState walks a tightrope according to the Times: commanders hate seeing bad news go public, propagandists nitpick, and every update risks political fallout. But when the country’s top general admits your hobby-turned-map is sometimes more reliable than the army’s, you’ve clearly redrawn the front lines of trust.
THE RECRUIT DISCHARGED: Somehow, we missed the news that the Netflix series “The Recruit,” about a young CIA lawyer who keeps getting into wild scrapes, had been cancelled after two seasons. The first season, starring Noah Centineo, started streaming in late 2022. It got decent Rotten Tomatoes ratings when it first came out and improved in season two which came online in 2025. However, when season one first streamed, The Dead Drop quoted a couple Cipher Brief experts as calling it “one of the dumbest things I’ve seen on TV” and suggesting that real CIA lawyers would be “mortified” by it. But while the public seemed to like it, the decision was announced not to go for an anticipated season 3 – without official explanation. Speculation was that the show was too costly to produce. Not enough buck for the bang, perhaps. Some scenes in the second season appeared to have been shot at CIA headquarters – suggesting that real CIA peeps were not so mortified about the show featuring a junior attorney engaging in gun battles, car chases and frequent fisticuffs.
(PUT YOUR) BOMBS AWAY: With the explosion of the use of artificial intelligence, it’s good to see that some are erecting guardrails intended to protect national security. Anthropic recently announced that they have created tools that can help determine whether someone asking questions of their Claude AI search platform is just having “benign nuclear-related conversations” or if they might be asking questions that could help bad actors actually develop nuclear weapons. Anthropic says it’s been working with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Energy and that they are sharing their work on this with competitors as well. We asked ChatGPT if OpenAI had similar safeguards in place to filter incoming questions and to either refuse or redirect unsafe queries and we were told “yes.” ChatGPT offered to explain how AI distinguishes between legitimate scientific inquiries (e.g. learning about nuclear history or policy) and stuff like weapons design – but we passed. Sounded too much like rocket science to us.
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