7 Comments
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Auguste Meyrat's avatar

Agreed. Hehseth’s outsider profile has been key to his success. Our military is far stronger now.

Shaked Koplewitz's avatar

The anthropic fiasco otoh is a pretty big strike against him

Christopher Brunet's avatar

I feel like Steve Feinberg, the deputy secretary of war, is the brains of the operation and calling the shots. He has about 30 IQ points on Hegseth

Hegseth makes a nice central casting look to him though, the perfect mouthpiece

Philip Reichert's avatar

I agree that Hegseth likely isn't directing the pieces on the chessboard, but the confirmation arguments imply that he couldn't be trusted to sit in the position at all. In the inverse situation where you have an establishment SecDef/SecWar doing very well, they would get the credit for setting up the organization to function as it has

Tidewater Lord's avatar

Elbridge Colby is the real brain. Not Feinberg

David Taylor's avatar

That doesn’t matter. He was smart enough to put him in place and trust his management. That is part of being competent.

Alan's avatar

The obsession with IQ’s is a distraction. A successful leader surrounds himself with and attracts talented people.

One of Hegseth’s greatest accomplishments is that he has a fairly leak-proof DoW. The neocons, liberal neocons (Hillary, Susan Rice) and the media are all crashing out over Iran because they aren’t getting any “ insider” information.