There’s this freshly minted “2-minute 35-second video” clip dubbed “Arsenal of Freedom” that comes across as a graphically animated “PowerPoint presentation” of how Pete Hegseth of the US Department of War attempts to justify a proposed 50-percent hike in the 2027 defense budget. 

In effect, Hegseth staged a social media offensive in releasing this maiden 8 May video. Clearly, the sequels will be meant to control the narrative that, before President Donald Trump came to office, the Pentagon had been “broken” for decades. 

Ranged against the monumental failure of the US in its war on Iran, more so its much-professed goal of opening the Strait of Hormuz, the video may well be propaganda masquerading as a well-thought-out defense cum developmental roadmap.

Hegseth appeared to be pleading: “Give us the budget and we will sign this promissory note before you.” How would that ensure that the defense or war spending would make the American people better off than worse off?  

Since Hegseth seems to have been given the latitude by no less than the President to speak on behalf of every American, what he announced to all and sundry to make the US the “most lethal fighting force in the world” betrayed any claim of a higher objective than to replace the bureaucracy with business. He quite cleverly bundled together amazing themes of “speed, volume, and fiscal responsibility,” except without the fine print. 

Being unabashedly referenced to as a generational investment in a so-called “arsenal of freedom,” it should insult rather than mesmerize every well-meaning American.

By the manner in which the Democrats and Republicans alike squeezed Hegseth on the defense budget, the next sequel to this narrative will be operating in a void. Another round of empty rhetoric it’s going to be. 

One might say Hegseth was not a prominent Fox News host for nothing, if he had a respectable stint as a military war veteran. But we are aware that anyone who has served at least 180 days is considered a veteran per US federal guidelines.

Hegseth’s espousal of the so-called “Deal Team Six” challenges geopolitical reality, amounting to a naked confession of a simply driven personal choice rather than of a higher expertise criteria. What’s likewise astonishing is his claim to shift from a bureaucracy to business after alleging that prior to Trump, the bureaucracy siphoned off taxpayer money with delays and cost overruns in the defense budget. 

Now, the defense chief claims every dollar will not go down the tubes but will be spent responsibly because it’s what Americans deserve. There’s no mistaking how Hegseth tends to play up a utopia as though his purported move from a bureaucracy to business will do the trick over the prior regime, where defense spending did a “double dip” at taxpayer expense. 

This and any video that will follow, so long as it’s from Hegseth’s script, ought to be viewed with a great amount of cynicism since the end result could be just another faux pas. The focus on the private sector in terms of defense companies to produce what the soldiers need without delays or cost overruns will be the way forward under Trump’s initiative. 

All told, however, there’s an astonishingly utter lack of relevant and vetted data or corpus of information that would remotely convince the universe Hegseth’s whole presentation is on the level of doable, tangible, and concrete objectives. 

Indeed, it’s an important teaching in public policy to run the bureaucracy like a business. But with Hegseth will this succeed? 

Meanwhile, US defense today appears to be a “quantum recovery project.”