There are, apparently, several ways to tell the Secretary of Defense that you think he’s making a dumb decision. Social media posts, pointed congressional inquiry, and probably some heated discussions behind closed doors - juicy interactions to which we will never be privy.
One such way is called a “non-concur”, which is disappointingly less dramatic than what I would’ve called it.
According to emerging reporting, a non-concur is exactly what several of America’s most senior military leaders recently did. Others concurred, albeit warning that continuing down our current path carries significant risk.
Per WaPo, a classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB) dated Aug. 14 contained objections, or non-concurs, from the commanders responsible for EUCOM, INDOPACOM and SOUTHCOM, plus the Navy’s top admiral, CNO Caudle, over continued instruction to redirect forces toward the Middle East.
Military leaders warned that sustaining the current posture for the Iran war risks degrading America’s ability to maintain its strategic positioning elsewhere, which has already been noticed by adversary and ally alike.
Some reportedly warned that moving our ships and surveillance assets away from their regions was degrading obligations extending all the way to homeland defense - our ability to defend ourselves from a home turf perspective.
And yet, the orders continue.
My homeland security professors, wherever they may be, must be ripping their hair out - this was all very theoretical when I was in school. The tabletop thought experiments we ran didn’t usually end favorably in these circumstances.
I try not to think about that too much these days.
The commanders disagreed, substantiated their disagreement, listed the potential impact for their respective areas of responsibility, and then acknowledged that they would, of course, execute their given orders anyways.
This is normal.
Or, at least, it’s supposed to be.
The Pentagon is supposed to hold people who say no.
Civilian control of the military is one of those principles that is both extremely important, and very boring.
The President is the Commander in Chief. The Secretary of Defense is a civilian political appointee. Generals don’t overrule presidents because they think they know better, nor should they. But Congress intentionally formatted the Pentagon in such a way that doesn’t frequently produce an automatic ‘yes’ to military decisions.
Under 10 U.S.C. §151, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is explicitly the principal military adviser to the President, National Security Council, and SecDef. The law anticipates disagreement: The chairman is to convey a range of military advice and opinion to civilian leadership.
The military also employs an astonishing number of lawyers, inspectors, investigators, auditors, and assorted professional buzzkill-ers ad nauseam whose entire existence regularly requires them to explain why something cannot, or really, really, should not, be done. Those people are not fun, but are very necessary, especially at a high level.
This is not a defect. The friction was intentionally baked into the system, which is why I’ve become increasingly interested in the sheer number of squeaky wheels who appear to be disappearing from the equation entirely.
In February 2025, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. CQ Brown was removed before the completion of his term. Hegseth simultaneously removed Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Air Force Vice Chief Gen. James Slife, along with Army and Air Force Judge Advocates General (JAG)s.
Hegseth’s own announcement thanked the officers for their service and explained that the administration was installing leadership focused on “deterring, fighting, and winning wars.”
The churn didn’t stop with uniformed leadership. Navy Secretary John Phelan, a Trump donor personally selected for the job, was forced out in April after reported clashes with Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg. Someone familiar with his firing told Axios: “His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he thinks should be given.”
And, ever inconvenient for the timing of my drafting, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned as I was writing. Driscoll is an Iraq veteran, JD Vance’s Yale law peer and ally, and a Trump appointee who reportedly clashed, repeatedly, with Hegseth. Driscoll vehemently denied any resignation plans in April.
New reporting says Hegseth believed Driscoll had not been “appropriately deferential”. The White House has praised Driscoll's tenure, but offered no further reasoning for his departure.
Sources say Driscoll repeatedly warned the White House about Hegseth’s removal of senior officers and his intervention in military promotions. Per ABC, Driscoll warned Trump the churn was shrinking the pool of officers available for future senior command.
We’ll be returning to that particular problem shortly.
Smatterings of information can be found about any individual’s various accolades and shortfalls, as can be expected for any military leader, so personality factors are certainly at play too.
I don't know that we're watching dissenters being deliberately weeded out. But there are enough newly vacant seats that I had to check, which is worrisome enough.
Saying no is still allowed.
Importantly, people are still doing it.
In January, CNO Caudle publicly stated he would “push back” if the Navy were asked to extend the USS Gerald R. Ford and her Strike Group again. At this point, the Ford had already been deployed for over 200 days, including its surprise Caribbean vacation on a slight detour home from Europe, to conduct its now-infamous Venezuelan foray.
Caudle wasn’t exactly subtle about why another extension bothered him.
Missed funerals, life events, and babies.
A month later, the Ford was dispatched to the Middle East anyway.
We don’t know what Caudle said privately before that decision, or whether he formally objected. What we know is considerably narrower: America’s top naval officer publicly warned about the consequences of extending the ship, said he intended to push back, and civilian leadership subsequently made a different decision.
That’s fine. Admiral advises, President decides, Navy goes.
What interests me is that Caudle is still advising, which brings us back to August. Senior military leaders are now reportedly telling Hegseth that continued Middle East commitments are untenable, while Caudle said last week that he continues to push back hard against deployment extensions.
The room has not gone quiet.
But everybody saw what happened to the last guy.
This administration has not exactly hidden the value it places on loyalty, and how fiercely the tides coincidentally tend to turn for those who dare betray.
The scale of personnel turnover becomes a little difficult to convey in prose, so eventually I stopped trying.
Below are senior military/service leaders who have been fired, removed, resigned, retired unusually early, had promotions derailed, or otherwise found themselves with an unexpected abundance of free time since a totally random chosen date (January 20, 2025).
There’s also another important caveat. Hegseth has ordered a thinning of senior ranks, including a 20% reduction in four-star positions, and broader cuts to the general and flag officer corps as a part of what he calls the “Less Generals More GIs Policy”, which…sure.
He’s been unusually frank that some turnover is intentional.
In a September 2025 speech to senior military leaders, he acknowledged ousting “a number of senior officers”, arguing that it is “nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture”.
Fair enough. Some of what follows is therefore not mysterious attrition. I’m not claiming every departure is directly tied to dissent.
It’s still quite a staggering list.
Army
Lt. Gen. Berger - Army JAG - Fired, Feb. 2025
Gen. Mingus - Vice Chief of Staff - Replaced unexpectedly; subsequently retired, Feb. 2026
Gen. George - Army Chief of Staff - Ousted/immediate retirement, Apr. 2026
Gen. Hodne - Army Transformation & Training Cmd. - Removed, Apr. 2026
Maj. Gen. Green - Army Chief of Chaplains - Removed, Apr. 2026
Gen. Donahue - U.S. Army Europe & Africa / NATO Allied Land Cmd. - Unexpectedly relinquished command, July 2026
Sec. Dan Driscoll - Sec. of the Army - Resigned, Aug. 2026
Navy
Adm. Franchetti - CNO - Fired, Feb. 2025
Vice Adm. Chatfield - U.S. Military Rep. to NATO Military Committee - Fired, Apr. 2025
Rear Adm. Donnelly - Seventh Fleet Cmdr. nominee - Promotion withdrawn, July 2025
Vice Adm. Lacore - Chief of Navy Reserve - Fired, Aug. 2025
Rear Adm. Sands - Naval Special Warfare Cmd. - Fired, Aug. 2025
Jon Harrison - Chief of Staff to SECNAV - Fired, Oct. 2025
Adm. Holsey - SOUTHCOM Cmdr. - Surprise retirement ~2 years early, Dec. 2025
Sec. John Phelan - Sec. of the Navy - Forced out/immediate departure, Apr. 2026
Air Force
Gen. Slife - Vice Chief of Staff - Removed, Feb. 2025
Lt. Gen. Plummer - Air Force JAG - Fired, Feb. 2025
Gen. Bussiere - Air Force Global Strike Cmd. - Abruptly requested retirement, Sep. 2025
Gen. Allvin - Air Force Chief of Staff - Surprise! Early retirement, Nov. 2025
Joint / Defense-wide
Gen. Brown - Chairman, Joint Chiefs - Fired, Feb. 2025
Gen. Haugh - CYBERCOM Cmdr. / NSA Dir. - Fired, Apr. 2025
Lt. Gen. Kruse - DIA Dir. - Fired, Aug. 2025
Coast Guard*
Adm. Fagan - Commandant, USCG - Fired, Jan. 2025
* USCG is an armed service which normally operates under DHS, not the DOD. A quirk I have further commentary on, but saved for a later date, for your benefit.
There are plenty of individually defensible explanations buried in there. Taken together, that is an extraordinary amount of institutional memory walking out the door in a remarkably short period of time, especially considering we’re actively engaged in conflict at multiple points around the world. Trimming the fat of those presiding over active combat probably isn’t how I'd proceed, but no one asked me.
The volume of turnover has begun bothering the Republicans responsible for defense oversight, too. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told reporters Tuesday, “I’m tired of all the churn. I want to see some stability.”
The people leaving may not actually be the most interesting part.
I started looking at who fills the seats Hegseth has recently emptied, and realized he beat me to it.
In 2026 alone, he has reportedly removed at least 45 officers from military promotion lists. This week, he removed at least six officers from a list of 18 Army one-stars selected for promotion to two-star general. Last week, four Army officers already selected for brigadier general had their promotions blocked. Some recently worked for Gen. Randy George. Others had ties to Gen. Christopher Donahue. Both men are on the list above.
Senators demanding an Inspector General investigation into Hegseth’s promotion practices have cited reporting that Pentagon officials were tasked with searching the internet for photos, videos, and news articles involving promotion candidates for material that might draw Hegseth’s personal ire.
I find this considerably more interesting than another termination.
Because now, the discussion is no longer limited to removing existing leaders. We’re talking about curating the pool from which the next group emerges.
Some of those being selected out aren’t on my list at all, and some even remain nameless. They’re not the ones leaving, but they’re (some of) the people who were already selected to move up behind them, and have since been banished back to relative obscurity.
CBS reported this morning that many officers who failed to secure promotions have subsequently left the military entirely.
Which, unfortunately, is how I started thinking about pugs.
This is, more or less, how we got pugs.
The modern pug and a gray wolf - same common ancestor, but one can’t breathe and is, as a dog, largely useless1.
Humans did not sit down one afternoon and decide that our end goal was to create little meatballs whose eyeballs fall out every now and then.
What happened was selective breeding for characteristics we liked, over and over, until failure. Eventually, the animal changed.
Institutions work similarly.
You don’t actually need to issue an order for everyone in the room to agree with you. In our system, that doesn’t work, would be too blatant, and is objectively wrong/illegal/a monarchist system, etc.
What you can do is, effectively, clicker training.
Praise and reward compliance visibly enough that it becomes aspirational. Make disagreement uncomfortable, and professionally costly enough to be consequential. Make advancement contingent upon ‘understanding what leadership wants’. Remove enough outliers, and ding!
You have effectively neutralized the genetic variation of the group, arriving at full pug.
I’m beginning to wonder whether we are selectively breeding a brachycephalic national security apparatus.
That would be considerably funnier if this dog did not possess nuclear weapons.
The exits get more interesting when you move outside service leadership itself.
Joe Kent is the former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a retired Special Operations soldier with 11 combat deployments, and benefactor to some questionable individuals. He wasn’t quite a resistance liberal who wandered into this administration by mistake. Then the Iran war started. Kent concluded Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States and promptly resigned, writing that he could not “in good conscience” support the war. Hmm.
Then there is the curious case of Senator Mark Kelly, a particularly strange bridge between civilian politics & military discipline because Kelly is both a sitting senator and retired Navy captain (and an astronaut, and a twin. He has aura, bulletproof love, and questionable amounts of AIPAC funding (but no man is perfect, so we’re moving on).
Kelly participated in a Nov. 2025 ‘We Are the World’ style video reminding service members that they can refuse unlawful orders, which is what establishment democrats are considering on-trend activism these days. Keep that finger on the pulse, guys.
In a masterclass of proportionate response, Hegseth censured him, the president called the lawmakers’ conduct “seditious behavior, punishable by DEATH!”, and proceedings intended to reduce Kelly’s retired rank and pay were initiated. A (dubya) Bush-appointed federal judge blocked those actions in February, with an opinion that appropriately quoted Bob Dylan.
Kelly is allowed to be wrong about the administration. Hegseth is allowed to think the video was irresponsible. What interests me is considerably more basic: Currently serving officers watched SecDef attempt to impose military consequences on a retired officer and sitting senator, for public speech about the obligation to refuse unlawful orders.
Organizations behave differently when everyone in the room saw what happened to the last guy who disagreed.
You don’t have to tell them to shut up, because self-preservation is one hell of a drug. Eventually, when you’ve culled enough mouthpieces, the room naturally quiets.
Even those who remain stop volunteering their opinions.
There are perfectly reasonable explanations for all of this, I remind myself, in an attempt to self-soothe.
The non-concurs matter. Caudle is still publicly pushing back. Military leaders are still putting their objections to paper, substantiating them, and sending them upstream even when they know the ultimate decision belongs to someone else.
The room is not completely quiet.
My concern is what is happening to the volume.
There are individually sufficient explanations for nearly everything above. The administration is openly reducing senior ranks. Presidents can replace military leadership. Secretaries resign. Admirals retire.
Sometimes, the guy who got fired really did suck, and everyone hated him anyways, thus good riddance.
I don’t need every departure to be retaliation for the pattern to bother me. Selection pressure doesn’t require an order, which is…sort of the whole point.
As the next guy slides into a new seat, still warm from his recently departed predecessor, nobody has to order him to tread carefully and advise accordingly. He can look around the table, count the new faces, and decide for himself just how freely he would like to speak.
People inside the Pentagon are still saying no.
That’s encouraging, yet also an incredibly low bar for institutional health.
The pug is technically still breathing.
We have, nevertheless, pretty clearly fucked up the dog.
I hold no personal vendetta against pugs, poor overbred symbols of human interference and greed they may be. I hope those in my life with beloved pet pugs (of which the Venn diagram is two very distinct circles) can forgive me for using a literary device at their expense. Shih Tzus, however, can go to hell.
I came for the pug and the subheadline, very funny!
I see the Pentagon firings as a repetition of the UHNW culture that Trump would have had in business. Hegseth has been paranoid about losing his job since at least February (I analyze language; he said it on Feb 9). Trump's hot/cold manipulations, threats that someone else may do the job better, and abusive critiques likely leave Hegseth feeling constantly unstable (on purpose; these bosses don't like others to know their true value as they may use it for leverage against them). So, Hegseth belittles and berates those below him, and, crucially, gets rid of any perceived internal competition, leaving pugs for Trump to choose from. It's like corporate Survivor.
Apples and oranges falls far short here