How Secretary Hegseth Got What’s Most Important Wrong

You gotta hand it to Pete. Insofar as appearances go, he has it all. He’s good-looking, trim, and fit. When he talks, he sounds severe and mean, just like a real warrior. He’s even articulate.

Unlike most voters, I didn’t listen to just the “good parts” of his infamous speech before our assembled military brass. Our never-fail-to-miss-the-point media repeated endlessly his tirade against fat, disheveled, sloppy-looking troops.

Sure, that was a bit shallow. But I listened to the whole, hour-long speech. I even took notes.

The speech impressed me for what it was not. It was far from the deranged, randomly focused monologues of our president. It was clear, forceful, articulate and well-delivered. Pete only stumbled once, and then only for a few words. He even managed to bash DEI, mostly in passing, without sounding like a racist, misogynist or homophobe.

If you were looking for a Secretary of Defense from central casting, Pete and his speech seemed to fit the bill. His focus on readiness, morale and esprit d’corps could have inspired troops going into battle at any time in human history.

But the speech—like Pete himself—had one glaring, fatal flaw. This isn’t any time in human history. It’s a very special time. It’s a crucial time in the respective histories of the US and China, as well as of China and the “West.” And it’s a very special time in the history of warfare.

The mightiest democracy in our species’ six thousand years of recorded history is self-evidently undergoing the most precipitous decline since ancient Rome’s. It’s continuing our entire species’ dismal history of democracy, which I calculated on a time- and population-weighted basis as 3.2 percent.

At the same time, the practice of warfare is undergoing rapid, fundamental change. Machines are replacing human troops. Not only can people direct those machines remotely while far from harm’s way. With prior programming, the machines can operate autonomously and collectively by themselves. Airborne or seaborne drones can be programmed to flock like birds or school like dolphins. They can react intelligently and spontaneously to enemy action based on previous general programming, without detailed advance knowledge of the enemy’s condition or strategy. It exaggerates little to say they can “think.”

Unfortunately, our own burdensomely costly military is far behind in this smart-machine arms race.

The reason is fundamental to the nature of our capitalistic, profit-driven society. The gigantic, privately-owned enterprises that supply most of our means of making and defending wars are all part of our “military-industrial complex.” Ike warned us about that in 1956.

Their primary goals, as taught by our 1,700 B-schools, are increasing revenue and profit for their shareholders, not military effectiveness, let alone economy or saving troops from harm. That’s why our huge Predator drones cost an estimated $4 million for a single unit and $20 -$40 million for a complete system. In comparison, estimates of the cost Iran’s small Shahed drones range from $20,000 to $375,000 (with Russia’s copies coming in at an estimated $50,000). The drones that Ukrainian soldiers are now assembling in the field from toys, commercial parts and cheap, standard, military explosives are estimated to cost just $300 to $1,000 per unit.

If all these lower estimates (as reported by Google AI) are accurate, then Iran can produce 200 drones, Russia can produce 80, and Ukraine can produce 13,333 for the cost of every one of our Predators. Do you think these vast differences in numbers (and concomitant strategic flexibility) work in our favor?

Pete’s speech on morale and readiness could have been appropriate at any time in human history. But for this particular time, when we’re behind in the most revolutionary arms race in the history of warfare, his speech was all but irrelevant. (Pete did mention drones, but only in passing, as if they were nothing more than a newer, better bullet, rather than a world-historical change of approach.) He had called an extraordinary meeting of all American top brass, forcing them to fly in from all corners of the Earth, to give a pep talk that any military leader from ancient Sparta or the Qing Dynasty might have given.

To see how totally irrelevant Pete’s speech was for our times, consider Taiwan. It’s the most likely locus of a future war involving us directly. China has set itself the goal of controlling the island some time in 2027. Since Taiwan wants to keep its fragile independence, and since the US has pledged to support it, the application of military force is strongly implied.

But what kind of force? Can we expect a full-scale assault by China? Are we going to see Chinese troops storming the beaches near Taipei as our troops once stormed Iwo Jima?

Not hardly. China’s few wars since Mao’s Communist Revolution have been by proxy, in Korea and Vietnam. In its 76 years of control, the Chinese Communist Party has never attacked another nation directly without provocation, whether for conquest or for more commercial ends. It has only supplied armaments and sometimes troops to “buffer states.”

Even more important, Xi Jinping and his cohorts are not stupid. They are not about to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. They would not risk injuring, let alone destroying, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), probably the world’s most advanced and productive chip maker and the source of much of China’s future prowess in drones. Nor would China risk the lives of Taiwan’s semiconductor workers, or other workers who make Taiwan industrially and commercially valuable. There is never going to be a full-scale sea and ground invasion of Taiwan.

So how will China drag Taiwan reluctantly into its fold? Undoubtedly it will try to blockade the island. It will declare an air and sea cordon, probably a good distance away. It will enforce the blockade with a massive armada of air and sea drones. The drones will launch from fast-moving ships and/or stealth aircraft (if China can copy or steal our stealth technology). Or they will launch from the Chinese Mainland, in a bold dare for us to start a war directly with China.

By means of that air and sea cordon, China will control all traffic of people and goods in and out of Taiwan. In this entirely seagoing and airborne struggle, both sides will try hard not to damage Taiwan, its people, or its precious industries. Yet when we send our gigantic, lumbering aircraft carriers and airborne bombers out to break the blockade, China will respond with massive strikes of modern, autonomous and remotely controlled drones.

Our carriers and similar WW2-era ships will be sitting ducks. And unlike the forces for which they are sitting, they will contain real people, lots of them.

How long do you think American public support for war will survive our first aircraft carrier going down, with thousands of American sailors’ lives lost? our second?

Will China use its blockade to starve the Taiwanese into submission? I doubt it. I think China will simply make life hard for the Taiwanese for a while, using its blockade to round up and imprison Taiwan’s chief advocates of independence and democracy. Perhaps fighting a few one-sided battles with us and our allies will drive the point home. Perhaps the Taiwanese will see the writing on the wall and decide that discretion is the better part of valor, that prosperity and membership in the world’s next great empire is worth the price of foregoing independence and democracy.

After all, hasn’t our own current president shown the world that democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be?

Anyway, haven’t most of China’s ethnically Chinese people collectively supported a new empire since Mao? The Chinese are a quintessentially practical people.

If all this happens as described here, Chinese history will have come full circle, in what the Chinese might call a delicious irony. During the two Opium Wars (First, 1839-42; Second, 1856-60), the British commandeered exclusive trading rights to Hong Kong and later the Kowloon Peninsula by military force. The British won these battles with the aid of superior hand-held firearms, which were faster-reloading and more accurate than their Chinese counterparts. The Brits thus won their battles although the Chinese had invented the gunpowder that powered their firearms nearly a millennium before.

Just so, the US will have invented most of the semiconductors, chips and programming technology used in all sides’ drones. But we will have failed to improve them to provide low-cost, effective and efficient means of fighting wars without putting human lives at risk. And our failure will have been a direct result of our private military suppliers’ focus on profit, rather than military necessity and efficacy.

So in dwelling on fighting spirit and “lethality,” Pete not only missed the entire point of modern warfare. He missed the historic and visionary technological developments that, in theory, permit wars to be fought and won by sacrificing mostly machines, rather than human lives. If continued, his “leadership” of his so-called “Department of War” will thus mark a decisive shift in military competency from West to East, and a major turnabout in human history.

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