Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Trump/Hegseth idiocy it is. "This standoff is seen as an unusual and public fight between the defense establishment
and a private tech firm over the control of AI in warfare.
You don't even know the half of it. Gut all higher learning and insert AI here. Idiots."

Hegseth's culture war obsession is a negative for everybody and everything.

From your 1st:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of members of the military attending some of the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities on Friday, beginning academic year 2026-27, arguing the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies” to service members.

Hegseth, who attended Harvard University for postgraduate studies, said the move would affect institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Yale University and “others.”

Your - https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5759402-pentagon-cancels-attendance-ivy-league/

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To the end of your 2nd:

Hegseth, since his days as a Fox News host, has consistently advocated for a separate set of ethics, norms, political views, and status within society for service members.

Rather than the citizen-soldier model we currently have, which represents a broad cross-section of American society and mirrors the wide variety of values in American society, this is all just another step in an attempt to insulate the DoD from the American public.

The real question in all of this is, do we really want a military filled with praetorians?

1. I’m not even going to bother touching on how disastrous this would be for the force in terms of depriving the military of people with advanced degrees from top-tier institutions in areas like engineering and physics. If that’s not self-evident to you, you should stop reading.

2. Not to mention things like State, USAID, or providing the political capital necessary to sustain operations.

3. For a good view on how senior officers and politicians work together to synchronize military actions with political needs, I’d recommend No End Save Victory by David Kaiser. But really, any book on FDR and WW2 covers this quite a lot.

4. This is putting aside that there’s no such thing as an apolitical military, as all militaries are fundamentally reflections of their societies and are subordinate to what political considerations demand of those militaries.

5. For the sake of argument, I’m going to put aside the idea that the U.S. military is “woke” as an absurd claim. Not that “woke” actually means anything at this point besides “vaguely liberal according to social media.”

6. I’ll again put aside the fact that the military—especially at higher levels of officership—involve signifigantly more activities than direct kinetic actions. You only need to look at someone like Eisenhower to see how this is an illiterate view of what military activities entail.

7. Climate Change is, to be clear, a very real national security concern, and if you don’t think that things like sub-saharan africa experincing water scarcity matter for security, you’re a complete idiot.

Your - https://othermeans.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-warfighter

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AI Overview

Top US military leadership is roughly split, with about half of 4-star officers graduating from federal service academies
(West Point, Annapolis, etc.) and the other half from various civilian universities. While elite institutions often
produce influential leaders, senior military commanders represent a broad spectrum of educational
backgrounds rather than just a few top schools.

Key Findings Regarding Top Military Leaders:

* Service Academies: Institutions like West PointAnnapolis, and the Air Force Academy are considered top-tier institutions that produce a large portion of military leadership.

* Split Backgrounds: A study of 42 four-star generals and admirals showed an even 50/50 split between service academy graduates and civilian university graduates.

* Broader Elite Trends: While many powerful Americans come from a narrow range of elite schools, this trend is more pronounced in areas like the Harvard faculty (78-80%) than in top military command.

Top Military Schools and Institutions:

* United States Military Academy (West Point): Known for developing leaders with a focus on "Duty, Honor, Country".

* US Air Force Academy: Offers rigorous academic and military training.

* United States Naval Academy: Produces officers for the Navy and Marine Corps.

* Other Elite Institutions: Many high-ranking officers also come from top-tier civilian universities, widening the base of leadership education.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=most+all+of+America%27s+top+soldiers+ver+decades+have+come+from+top+schools