Category Archives: defense policy

US Naval Academy Midshipman Honor Concept and Mikie Shirrell

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New Jersey’s Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Governor, it turns out, was barred from walking with her Naval Academy class during its graduation ceremony, although she was allowed to graduate and be commissioned into our Navy. Her explanation for this is this:

I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk….

What she didn’t turn some of her classmates in over was a cheating scandal that impacted 130 midshipmen in her class.

And she’s proud of that refusal.

This is the Naval Academy’s Honor Concept [boldface in the original, italic emphasis added]:

Midshipmen are persons of integrity: They stand for that which is right.
They tell the truth and ensure that the truth is known.
They do not lie.

They embrace fairness in all actions. They ensure that work submitted as their own is their own, and that assistance received from any source is authorized and properly documented.
They do not cheat.

They respect the property of others and ensure that others are able to benefit from the use of their own property.
They do not steal.

By refusing to turn in those classmates about whom she knew, by refusing to testify over the course of the cheating investigation, Sherrill openly lied by omission. She further lied by tacitly obstructing that investigation. She affirmatively prevented the truth from being known.

This is the concept of honor and integrity that Mikie Sherrill is putting on offer for the good citizens of New Jersey. It seems a poor fit for any Governor’s office.

The Press in the Pentagon

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SecDef Pete Hegseth is severely restricting the press’ access in the Pentagon and what the press can print about the doings in the Pentagon.

The policy would require credentialed reporters to sign a pledge agreeing not to publish information unless it has been cleared for release. That would include materials that have already been unclassified. Journalists who refuse could lose their access.

After all,

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the change and said it was designed to curb leaks and protect information at the Pentagon.
“Time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad,” said Hegseth at a news conference in June.

He’s right about that, and it’s too bad the press has become addicted to leaks, especially given that the leakers are themselves intrinsically dishonest, instead of being willing to do the hard work of original investigative reporting.

The uproar over the restrictions is, though, justified, in one respect. The prevention of leaks getting published at the expense of national security could be more efficiently achieved in a different way.

That way would have the SecDef expand the various Pentagon Public Affairs Offices, with the Public Affairs Officer in the SecDef office controlling the PAOs below. This expansion and hierarchical nature of the PAO structure would be necessary due to the following. Restrict all journalists from all of the Pentagon—no wondering the halls, no ducking into unlocked offices, and so on—other than the PAO offices and any gatherings and meetings to which the press or specific journalists are explicitly invited.

Any DoD person, civilian or military and of any rank, a journalist encounters during duty hours and who is asked a question by the journalist, must be required to answer the question by directing the journalist to the nearest Public Affairs Office while saying nothing else in response to the question. The flip side of this is that the journalist must get responses from the PAOs within an hour of asking his questions, whether those responses are answers or decisions not to answer.

If the person is not on Pentagon grounds and is off-duty, he must make clear to the journalist that he is not speaking for DoD; he is solely expressing his personal opinion. Journalists who do not make note of that early in their publications should lose their Pentagon access.

Similar rules should be applied to all US military installations around the nation and the world as well as to all civilian facilities that are operating under DoD contract.

Insufficient

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A deal for TikTok is in the offing, but it’s wholly insufficient in my not very humble opinion. The deal breaker for me:

Under the agreement, a new entity would be created to run TikTok in the US. A consortium of new investors including private-equity firm Silver Lake and Oracle would own roughly half. Existing investors such as trading firm Susquehanna International would hold about 30%. TikTok parent ByteDance‘s stake would dip below 20% to comply with a 2024 law requiring the company to do a deal or stop operating in the US.

ByteDance is domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and so it is subject to the PRC’s national intelligence laws. One of those laws requires PRC companies to answer intelligence community requests for information about its doings in other nations and about the doings of enterprises and individuals in those other nations that do business with ByteDance and those associated with it, and to go get that information—commit espionage—if it doesn’t have it already.

ByteDance‘s under 20% participation in the new TikTok entity might coincide with the American law, but it still leaves the PRC company, and so the PRC government, with too broad a window into American private affairs. Any window, of any size, is too much.

Leaks

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Leading off a Wall Street Journal article alleging Pentagon internal lawyers’ concerns regarding the Trump administration’s targeting of drug boats in international Caribbean Sea waters, there’s this:

Some military lawyers and other Defense Department officials are raising concerns about the legal implications of President Trump’s expanding military campaign against Latin American-based drug cartels, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Leave aside the worries about the legality of destroying boats and the crews on them that are targeting American citizens with those poisons. Of course, there’s nothing illegal about destroying those attacks in progress.

The larger question is this: who are those people with knowledge? They’re speaking without authorization, discussing in public matters of national security, and they’re doing so in direct violation of their terms of employment by the government, and depending on who they are, perhaps in violation of their oaths of office.

Some defense officials and career military lawyers have provided written and verbal legal opinions to decision makers inside the Pentagon, but believe they are being ignored or deliberately sidelined, according to one of the people.

This is pretty dispositive—in the WSJ‘s own words—of these people’s deliberate violation of their employment parameters. And all because these wonders actually think they run the show, and are quite cross that they’re not being heeded on the spot.

These are people—these are leakers—who need to be identified and fired for cause.

Not Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s War

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President Donald Trump (R) is dead [sic] wrong on this one.

This is not Trump’s war (it would never have started if I was president!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s war[.]

No, this is not Zelenskyy’s war, either. This is, plainly, Biden’s and Putin’s war. It’s especially Putin’s war—he’s the one who invaded, and compounding his responsibility, he sent the invasion in utterly without provocation. Ex-President Joe Biden (D), played a critical role in Putin’s decision to invade when Biden gave Putin permission to do so, saying that a small incursion would be OK.

On the other hand, Ukraine, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is fighting for its existence as a sovereign, independent nation that is responsible for its own existence.

Trump is right, though, on this much:

[I]t would never have started if I was president!