The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), recently rebranded as the Department of War (DOW), is shifting its focus to a “wartime footing.” In a speech to a group of defense-industry executives and DOD officials on Friday, Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined a broad plan to overhaul the Pentagon’s acquisition system and speed up weapons production:
Our objective is simple: Transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing, to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results…. American industry and spirit are begging to be unleashed to solve our most complex and dangerous war-fighting problems. We need to get out of our own way, out of your way, and enter into real partnership with you rather than overprescribe and decelerate your natural progress.
He later underscored:
We’re not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing. Building for victory should our adversaries FAFO [f*** around and find out].
The “transformation” was urgent, he said:
This is a 1939 moment, or hopefully a 1981 moment, a moment of mounting urgency. Enemies gather, threats grow. You feel it. I feel it. If we are going to prevent and avoid war, which is what we all want, we must prepare now.
Bureaucracy and Rumsfeld’s Shadow
Hegseth began his address by naming his “adversary” as being not on a battlefield, but inside the Pentagon. “The foe I’m talking about is much closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said. “Not the people, but the process; not the civilians, but the system.” He called it “one of the last bastions of central planning” that “with brutal consistency stifles free thought and crushes new ideas.”
“The modernization of the Department of War is a matter of life and death ultimately of every American,” declared the secretary.
Then came an unexpected admission. “The speech so far is not my own,” Hegseth said. “Those words are practically verbatim from a speech given by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 10, 2001.” He ended by again invoking Rumsfeld, urging the audience to build on “Rumsfeld’s vision.” That vision — outlined one day before 9/11 — was meant to “liberate” the Pentagon from bureaucracy. Instead, it ushered in two decades of war, privatization, and unchecked spending.
Rumsfeld’s name now carries a toxic legacy. His call to streamline defense spending became the justification for expanding it. He presided over the Iraq invasion, privatized logistics on an unprecedented scale, and normalized permanent war as policy.
By reviving that speech, Hegseth aligned himself not with meaningful reform to shrink the war machine, but with the model that made reform nearly impossible — one that equated efficiency with removing oversight and security with continuous mobilization.
Hellbound and Down 