OUR PICKSAI’s Hidden National Security Cost | Deepfake Doctors: How AI Spreads Medical Disinformation | China Rolls Out Its First Talent Visa as the US Retreats on H-1Bs, and more
· Hegseth’s Unusual, Partisan, and Dangerous Convening of Military Leaders
· Trump’s Speech to Generals Was Incitement to Violence Against Americans
· The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay
· Government to Keep Sharing Key Satellite Data for Hurricane Forecasting Despite Planned Cutoff
· AI’s Hidden National Security Cost
· Deepfake Doctors: How AI Spreads Medical Disinformation
· China Rolls Out Its First Talent Visa as the US Retreats on H-1Bs
Hegseth’s Unusual, Partisan, and Dangerous Convening of Military Leaders (Kori Schake, Lawfare)
If the defense secretary’s event allayed concerns of DEI in the military for some, it aggravated concerns of a politicized military for all.
Trump’s Speech to Generals Was Incitement to Violence Against Americans (Kori Schake, Foreign Policy)
Military leaders’ quiet professionalism offers hope amid a maelstrom.
The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)
All in all, Pete Hegseth’s address to the to the assembled military leaders was an utterly embarrassing address, but they likely already knew that Hegseth is unqualified for his job, and they could mostly tune him out. What they could not ignore, however, was the spectacle that President Donald Trump put on when he spoke after Hegseth.
Trump’s farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking is the kind of thing to serve up to an adoring MAGA crowd: They know that most of it is nonsense and only some of it is real. But it is another thing entirely to aim this kind of sludge at military officers, who are trained and acculturated to treat every word from the president with respect, and to regard his thoughts as policy.
American officers have never had to contend with a president like Trump. Plenty of presidents behaved badly and suffered mental and emotional setbacks: John F. Kennedy cavorted with secretaries in the White House pool, Lyndon Johnson unleashed foul-mouthed tirades on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Nixon fell into depression and paranoia, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden wrestled with the indignities of age. But the officer corps knew that presidents were basically normal men surrounded by other normal men and women, and that the American constitutional system would insulate the military from any mad orders that might emerge from the Oval Office. (Cont.)
