Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants a military without “fatties,” “trannies,” “beardos” or “weirdos.” But questions about whether he and DOD practice what they preach can be linked to the Pentagon’s celebrity visitors and favored contractors.
In his State of the Force address at Quantico, Va., Hegseth again preached discipline, readiness and lethality. In the same speech, he announced that Elon Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich would help chart the future of warfare.
The military gets a dress code. The celebrities get a standing invitation to shape its future.
Hegseth demands that troops and educators justify their place in his “warrior ethos” culture. His chosen outsiders seemingly arrive with his endorsement already attached.
The Beard Is Only Offensive Below a Certain Pay Grade
Hegseth’s speech supplies the slogan,” No fatties…no beardos, no weirdos.” It also supplies his assessment of Musk, Luckey and Gingrich as “three of our nation’s best minds.”
Project Meridian, overseen by Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael, is supposed to produce findings within 120 days, followed by a public rollout and classified annex.
Two weeks earlier, Hegseth welcomed social media influencers Jake and Logan Paul to the Pentagon. The official Sept. 17 photograph shows every other person sporting facial hair beside the clean-shaven secretary.
Hegseth himself wanted to keep his vacation beard in 2018, but his Fox bosses insisted it go. A barber shaved it off live on Fox News’ Fox & Friends program.
Civilian guests do not fall under military grooming regulations. Their beards violate no order. But Hegseth for whatever reason has chosen to turn appearance into a public shorthand for seriousness, toughness and belonging.
For troops, the consequences extend beyond an awkward photograph. His 2025 shaving directive ordered separation proceedings for service members needing medical shaving exemptions beyond a year.
Shaving can aggravate pseudofolliculitis barbae, a condition involving painful ingrown hairs that disproportionately affects Black men.
A medical condition can put a troop’s career at risk. A celebrity’s facial hair garners a Pentagon photo opportunity.
Professors Get Suspicion. Newt Gets a Seat.
The more consequential contradiction sits in the classroom.
Hegseth’s Sept. 29 tenure memo stops new tenure appointments for civilian service academy professors. It does not explicitly revoke existing tenure or order all civilians out.
It also leaves the replacement employment structure and treatment of professors pursuing tenure unspecified. Some affected civilian educators are veterans, including combat veterans.
Hegseth argues that tenure encourages complacency and distracts from military requirements. However, academy leaders told senators in March 2025 that they already had procedures to dismiss tenured professors. The Pentagon provided no examples of tenure weakening readiness.
The secretary’s suspicion of civilian influence on lethality apparently disappears when the assignment gets exponentially more consequential. A civilian professor teaching mathematics faces a crackdown justified by “lethality.”
Musk, Luckey and Gingrich get tapped to help lead Project Meridian, identifying future warfare’s critical domains and capabilities.
It begs the question: If civilian expertise supposedly dilutes the mission in an academy classroom, then how does it become indispensable when Hegseth hands his chosen civilians a role shaping the military’s future?
Gingrich’s history as a college professor adds some irony. The larger contradiction is entrusting selected civilians with an undertaking far more consequential than deciding who teaches calculus while treating civilian academic practices as a threat to war fighting.
Contractors Have Something to Sell
Musk and Luckey bring relevant industrial experience. Their companies also bring financial interests.
Both SpaceX and Anduril already sell technology and equipment to the Pentagon. Their leaders now get to help identify what the military should need next. That gives them relevant experience, certainly, and a financial reason to like the answers.
Those capabilities offer a legitimate reason to hear from both men. They also offer billions of reasons to scrutinize their influence.
Asking defense suppliers to identify tomorrow’s essential capabilities requires adequate safeguards against receiving tomorrow’s sales catalog.
Federal conflict law generally restricts federal employees—including special government employees—from personally and substantially participating in particular matters affecting their financial interests. Exceptions and waivers exist.
Application to Meridian depends on participants’ appointment status and the work involved; a contractor’s inclusion alone establishes no violation.
Hegseth could quell concerns by publishing the appointment arrangements, applicable ethics safeguards, recusals and any waivers.
Lethality Requires More Than Casting
Civilian expertise has a distinguished defense pedigree. During World War II, Vannevar Bush’s Office of Scientific Research and Development helped organize the application of science to military problems.
The postwar research partnership grew from that experience.
Hegseth’s modernization agenda includes serious subjects: autonomous systems, resilient bases and future weapons. Serious work requires evidence, independent criticism and clear accountability.
Ridiculing troops’ appearances could be construed as antithetical to that larger mission. The same implication may be derived from the situation facing civilian professors.
Hegseth praised “apolitical” military leadership in the same speech that credited President Donald Trump with historic military strength, declaring that “ideological clowns” were out.
Time will tell whether past and new initiatives will embolden the U.S. military, maintain enlistment standards, and achieve the “warrior ethos” pontificated by Hegseth himself.
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