Right now in the Kyiv Independent newspaper, there is a headline that reads, “‘It was humiliating’ — Ex-US Army Secretary says Washington lags behind Ukraine in war innovations.” It’s humiliating, in and of itself, that in an English-language news source all about Ukraine, we have a story about the just-departed Army secretary explaining that the United States of fucking America just can’t keep up militarily with Ukraine.
Aren’t you glad Pete Hegseth is following troops around with shaving cream and a tube of testosterone gel?
But here we are.
The Kyiv Independent article isn’t an interview with former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, but an aggregation of one in Rolling Stone, Driscoll’s first since Hegseth forced him out for being too good at his job. If you’ll remember, Driscoll’s main thing was modernizing the US military, trying to teach them how to fight the wars of the future with drones and so forth — stuff that Ukraine has become an absolute master at on the battlefield. But yet so has Iran, which has clearly been confusing the shit out of the dumbass in charge of the American military.
Reports have said that Secretary Shitfaced was “suspicious and paranoid” about Driscoll, as we imagine he is around every person who questions his sincerely held religious belief that what’s ailing the US military is the presence of women, Black people and LGBT folks with non-military-approved haircuts. Driscoll was worried about the future of the Army, what with Whiskeydick firing all the generals and other actual talent. That’s where the problems came from.
“We’re not going to talk about modernization or transformation or experimentation?” a former Army official who worked with both Driscoll and Hegseth says about the Pentagon’s priorities. “We’re going to talk about standards and fitness. Nobody disagrees that’s important, but tell our guys on the ground when we don’t have anything to intercept the next Shahed [Iranian drone] coming at them that we’re going to launch some standards up at [it]. You know what I mean?” […]
“All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth about where we needed to go and what we needed to do, they got rid of, right?” a former senior Army officer tells me. “Because they want people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think. They’re culture warriors. They care about culture. And it’s only their culture, which is compliance and loyalty above your duty.” […]
“You’re a one-trick pony, you kind of bang the DEI drum, and it makes good headlines,” the former Army official says. “But the problem is, you’re in an active-shooting war, and there’s got to be a little more depth to it.”
What, you mean you can’t stop Iranian drones by showing-and-telling them how clean-cut and heterosexual you are for Jesus?
Also, didn’t Whiskeydick just announce a super Power Rangers Future Force of Newt Gingrich, Elon Musk and Matt Gaetz’s brother-in-law to totally modernize the military for the future of wars, in the year 2000 just like in the sketch on the Conan show?
Haha, well, about that task force.
To be quite clear, what comes across in the Rolling Stone interview is that Driscoll was literally pushed out for being good at his job, and better at it than Whiskeydick is at his.
He describes the problem, as he saw it:
“When you’re an American soldier, you would get to work every day, and you basically step back like 20 or 30 years with tech,” Driscoll tells me. “President Trump came into his second term with a military that had been very poorly prepared for modern war.”
And he describes what it’s been liking watching Ukraine adapt so quickly and get so much better at WARFIGHTER! than the US currently is:
“In some ways, it was humiliating seeing how quickly a nation could change when it needed to,” Driscoll says. “When you would see what Ukraine’s budget was and how small it was relative to ours and how, despite that, they had better weapons of war, it was a wake-up call.”
The article is full of interesting technological talk of how Driscoll and his team were trying to do just that. They were doing, to be clear, a lot.
But Hegseth had other plans.
Oh well.
Hegseth wanted an Instagram-ready Army instead of a modern one.
Because Pete Hegseth doesn’t have the military or advanced-level WARFIGHTER! experience required for the job, nor does he possess an understanding of the military beyond his own sad “No Tab” lack of battlefield accomplishments, and doesn’t possess the nimble sort of brain required to lead something as huge and lumbering and powerful as the US military in the year 2026 in multiple theaters of war.
Driscoll was the opposite of that, so he was a threat.
An Army officer who served in the Pentagon and spoke under anonymity out of fear of retaliation traces the friction to the defense secretary’s own confirmation. Hegseth barely squeaked through the Senate in 2025, in part over concerns about excessive drinking and a sexual-assault allegation. Nowhere on his résumé as a TV host and junior officer did he show the aptitude to lead an organization as vast as the Defense Department. Driscoll, by contrast, sailed through his hearing on Feb. 25 with no protest.
The Rolling Stone article of course features screaming histrionics, temper tantrums and denials from Sean Parnell, Hegseth’s designated ball-licking, ankle-biting pomeranian spokesman at the Defense Department, who — incidentally and horrifically — is also who Shitfaced wants to be the new Army secretary.
Fuck them, back to reality:
I asked the senior Army officer whether Hegseth’s hostility toward men like [Gen. Christopher] Donahue, a former Delta Force commander; [former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy] George, a Ranger-qualified infantry officer who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Driscoll, who’d earned his Ranger tab, unlike Hegseth, was really about insecurity. [Those other two were basically Driscoll’s team, who have also been forced out. — Ed.]
“I think it’s a combination of insecurity and fear,” the senior Army official tells me.
The article notes that once Driscoll had left — once he had resigned at the White House in August, and told Trump and Hegseth exactly why, directly after an event at Fort Bragg where people apparently were openly calling Hegseth “No Tab Pete” — Hegseth started getting rid of the initiatives Driscoll had advanced.
The article doesn’t mention at all how Hegseth just announced a new “Let’s modernize the military!” dog-and-pony show full of clownfucks Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich and Palmer Luckey — hey, we found the weirdos, beardos and wimps who couldn’t pass a physical exam! — because everybody knows that’s an absolute fucking joke.
Paul Waldman has a great takedown of what a joke it really is at Public Notice, we highly recommend it.
As Sen. Mark Kelly told Politico, “forgive me if I’m skeptical of entrusting the future of American warfare to people with zero military experience who stand to financially benefit from the decisions they’re making.”
In short, what we have here is a commission made up of an octogenarian crank and two billionaires who look at a future of chaos as an opportunity to remake the world and accumulate even more billions.
Octegenarian crank? Newt Gingrich’s solution to the oil supply problems created by the Iran war was to just use nukes to build a new canal to the Indian Ocean.
How could that go horribly, radioactively wrong?
And is there anyone left in the Pentagon who has the brains and experience to answer that very simple question?
If so, Whiskeydick will fire/force them out soon, just like he did with Dan Driscoll, don’t worry.
[Rolling Stone / Public Notice]
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That's the problem when you put someone who couldn't even manage an Arby's in charge of the entire military apparatus. Anyone who has even a *smidge* more leadership experience is a threat because they know what the fuck they are doing.
Driscoll isn't by any means a "good" guy, but even *he* knew Hegseth was in way over his head. And that made Driscoll a threat.
Well, Ukraine has been attacked and forced to respond with their lesser military resources. The result has been a complete change in warfare tactics and use of cheaper and effective materials.
The US hasn't been attacked for years (and when it was in 2001, it was with non-military weapons, I still remember the fish mouth gaping of a general when asked how a missle shield would have prevented civilian airliners from being crashed into buildings) It feeds defense contractors ridiculous sums of money for hi-tech weapons which are useful in some cases and complete vaporware in others.
Sure, they can blow up some defenseless fishing boats though.