Driscoll Dan Sec Army

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THIEL DIALOG UN NATO GEN

hegs CALL ALL SR OFFICERS TO MTG 9 25

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RUBIO TEAR DOWN ICC

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Another Army leader resigns after months of tension with top Trump brass

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HEGS FAIL

In the aftermath of President Donald Trump's Secretary of the Army resigning on Monday — amidst a purge of military personnel equating to more than nine centuries of experience — a new report reveals that the outgoing officer was deeply alarmed at Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's gutting of America's armed forces.

"During a White House meeting last week, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll brought his concerns about the future of the Army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to President Trump — a sign of how far tensions between the two Pentagon leaders had escalated, and of the dysfunction inside the building, four people familiar with the conversation told us," reported The Atlantic's Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan and Michael Scherer on Monday. "Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth, one of the people said. Driscoll argued that the Army could not transform itself the way it needs to because of the departure of so many leaders, this person said, adding that Trump expressed concern about the deep cuts to the Army’s senior leadership. Driscoll informed the president of his intention to resign — and by today, Driscoll was on his way out."

The journalists added, "Hegseth’s purge of the military has been so dramatic that with Driscoll gone, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. Because of all the firings across the service over the past year, the Army, with more than 450,000 active-duty soldiers positioned across the globe, has fewer generals than at any point in recent history. Driscoll’s personal appeal to Trump just days before his exit was the most direct articulation of high-level concerns among Pentagon leaders about the strains facing the force — including Hegseth’s intervention in Army personnel decisions and the mounting demands of the Iran war."

They also observed that Hegseth's rationales for firing people and withholding promotions have demoralized the ranks.

"The Army has long prided itself on representing the diversity of the country, but under Hegseth, minorities and women have been pushed out or barred from promotion," Youssef, Ryan and Scherer wrote. "The military has long sought to be apolitical, but under Hegseth, troops are measured not by combat experience but by their perceived loyalty to the administration. Among the generals fired have been some of the most experienced and decorated in the service. Each departure marks the loss of decades of investment in that soldier and raises questions about how future troops can rise through the ranks."

Driscoll left his position after months of clashing with Hegseth. According to a report by The Washington Post in April, “Hegseth and Driscoll have disagreed on numerous issues, including Hegseth’s moves to block the promotions of several Army officers." They added that if Driscoll stepped down, Trump might replace him with Hegseth's top spokesman Sean Parnell, which alarms observers as Parnell is perceived as being just as political and interested in culture war battles as Hegseth himself.

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NO LNX PIX

Powerful Miami men are on roster of secret society run by Palantir’s Peter Thiel By Shirsho Dasgupta June 24, 2026 11:25 AM Gift Article

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022. Marco Bello Getty Images A roster that was recently made public of 113 influential figures who were members of a secret society run by billionaire Peter Thiel or attended its events includes several individuals with South Florida ties. The group, named Dialog, was founded by Thiel in 2006 and annually brings together cultural figures, industry titans and U.S. government officials at retreats that are strictly off-the-record and confidential. TOP VIDEOS

The list was verified and first reported on by the San Francisco-based tech magazine WIRED. It includes, among others, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a resident of Indian Creek’s “Billionaire Bunker,” and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who grew up in Miami Beach. Also included are Barry Sternlicht, founder of the Miami Beach private investment firm Starwood Capital Group; and Mike Novogratz and Pete Briger, former and current top executives of Fortress Investment Group, which has a significant presence in Miami and is the primary financial backer of the Brightline rail system.

Thiel himself has owned a home in Miami Beach since 2020 and recently planted more roots in South Florida, announcing that his tech and surveillance firm, Palantir Technologies, had moved its headquarters to Miami. It is unclear which figures on the roster were actually Dialog members versus which were guests or invited attendees at its events. The Miami Herald was unable to find current contact information for Rubin.

A spokesperson for Fortress Investment declined to comment. None of the others responded. The Herald sent questions to the email listed on Dialog’s website and to a spokesperson for the Thiel Foundation ⁠— which typically handles press queries related to Thiel ⁠— but did not receive any response. Thiel has become influential in Republican politics in the last few years, bankrolling Trump-aligned candidates. He recently made headlines for hosting a series of lectures on the coming of the Antichrist and Armageddon. The announcement that Palantir ⁠— the controversial spyware and data analytics firm that contracts with the U.S. military, immigration enforcement ⁠and intelligence agencies — was moving to Miami was met with protests from some community members who say the firm is not welcome in South Florida.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner attends a State Dinner in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 28, 2026. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI AFP via Getty Images The roster of Dialog members and guests was initially left exposed online in the organization’s website code. It was made public by the Switzerland-based hacker-cum-activist who goes by the name “maia crimew” and was verified by WIRED.

Crimew, who is best known for publishing the U.S. “No Fly” list, told WIRED that an anonymous tipster alerted her to the list. A U.S. grand jury had indicted crimew in March 2021 on charges of hacking government systems, but prosecutors later dropped their push to extradite her from Switzerland. The Herald contacted her but did not receive any response. Forum for the world’s elite Dialog’s website describes itself as an “invite-only community of CEOs, founders, public intellectuals, government leaders, investors, artists, and more who gather for off-the-record conversations to learn from one another.” It notes that it has no ideological agenda or partisanship and does not accept donations. An invite for the society’s 2014 event in Sundance, Utah, that the Herald found in the recently released Epstein Files says it is a “bipartisan retreat discussing how to change the world.” “Dialog participants aren’t modest,” it says. “[W]e don’t want to spend our time being in a large audience listening to winded speeches. There are no speakers.

No panels. All attendees participate in break-out facilitated discussions.” It is unclear from the documents the DOJ released earlier this year whether Epstein attended any Dialog retreat or was a member. Starwood Capital Group Chairman and CEO Barry Sternlicht speaks during the 29th annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on May 4, 2026. PATRICK T. FALLON AFP via Getty Images Axios, which reported on Dialog’s plans to open a campus in Washington, D.C., last year, noted that past gatherings ⁠— which have typically had around 150 participants ⁠— have been held at Dove Mountain in Arizona and in Venice, Italy.

The roster and a second cache of registration records for Dialog’s planned August 2026 summit near Dublin that was obtained and verified by WIRED shows a remarkable convergence of power, money and influence. It lays out a program of off-the-record sessions titled “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “Navigating WWIII,” “Battlefield Technologies,” “How’s Your Sex Life?” and “Build-a-Cult.” Dialog’s list of registrants this year, WIRED reported, “spans hedge fund and private equity billionaires, current and former foreign officials, network television actors, best-selling authors, and religious leaders.” They include, according to WIRED, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They did not respond to the Herald’s requests for comment. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2026.

JIM WATSON AFP via Getty Images Ranking member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) speaks during a House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on March 19, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Andrew Harnik Getty Images Among military and security officials who are registered as participants are U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe and head of the U.S. European Command. “Every trip and everything General Grynkewich attends is subject to rigorous legal and ethical review,” NATO spokesperson Martin O’Donnell told the Herald, though he declined to comment specifically on the leaked information from Dialog. Driscoll did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article316233241.html#storylink=cpy

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the uneasy stalemate between Iran and the United States flared into violence on Sunday after America launched an attack on Iranian rocket launchers. Iran retaliated by launching missiles against Jordan, a US ally. The new round of fighting proves that the Trump administration remains committed to the fantasy that that more violence will force the Iranian government to surrender. In reality, although both sides in the conflict have endured losses, the ability of the US to impose its will with force has steadily diminished. On August 22, retired general Barry R. McCaffrey offered the sober assessment that “the US Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access the Gulf States. US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.”

McCaffrey is an eminently establishment figure, but his pessimistic conclusion aligns with the judgement of thinkers who are more typically seen as critics of the foreign-policy consensus. John Mearsheimer, for example, an international-relations professor at the University of Chicago, describes the Iran War as a humiliating defeat.

Unfortunately, acknowledging defeat doesn’t come easily to either Donald Trump or the ridiculous martinet he nominated to run the military, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Both Trump and Hegseth are cultural warriors first and foremost, interested in winning battles on social issues by purging trans soldiers from the military, blocking the advancement of women and Blacks in the upper ranks, and overturning anything they consider DEI (a broad category that includes even acknowledging that Black soldiers have served with distinction).

With his focus on culture wars, Hegseth isn’t likely to listen to the criticism of figures like McCaffrey and Mearsheimer. In fact, evidence suggests that he isn’t even willing to listen to his own four-star generals who are offering dire warning that the military is dangerously overextended. As The Washington Post reported on Sunday, “Several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.” Even before the Iran War started, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the White House “that the U.S. lacked sufficient munitions—and support from allies—to conduct an extended large-scale campaign.” The Trump administration ignored this caution, and the US is now in a worse position, lacking the military bases to resupply navy vessels in the region (which has led to crisis conditions on ships such as the USS Liberty) and suffering a shortage of Patriot interceptors.

The Post report noted that “certain generals and admirals were more expansive and frank than is usual in telling Hegseth they disagreed with orders to keep providing equipment and personnel when the operation’s trajectory remains uncertain.”

If Hegseth is disregarding the advice of his top generals, it’s because the culture war is more important to him than the real war. Hegseth has White House ambitions and is gearing up for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination. Losing a war with Iran would tarnish Hegseth politically, but he has developed a simple solution: using the resources of the Pentagon to create a troll army of social-media influencers who could create an alternate reality where all his actions were brilliant victories.

On August 27, Will Sommer of The Bulwark, an astute observer of the right, reported that one of Hegseth’s most vocal online fans was also covertly a civilian employee of the Pentagon. The person in question was Jennica Pounds, who posts under the name DataRepublican. As Sommer noted:

Hegseth has gone to great lengths to limit and muzzle many members of the traditional Pentagon press corps. But secretly employing a shadowy, rabidly online personality for the apparent purpose of going after your enemies is a remarkable illustration of the kind of steps Hegseth appears willing to take to fight internecine political wars. Here’s the thing, though:

Pounds appears to be just one of several people enlisted in such a task.

At least three other prominent pro-Trump social media figures who have either worked for Hegseth or almost gotten jobs at the Pentagon have also come to serve as reliable online allies for Hegseth. Funnily enough, they’ve also all rushed to defend Pounds in the face of the criticism that she’s an undercover federal operative.

On Sunday, the Post published an extensive article that built on Sommer’s journalism, both confirming it and providing additional details. According to the newspaper, “The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration.”

One of Hegseth’s troll soldiers, Thomas Anderson (who posts under the name Cynical Publius), repeatedly attacked anti-war Republican Representative Thomas Massie during a primary race that Massie ended up losing. It’s hard not to avoid the conclusion that taxpayer money allocated to the Pentagon was used by the executive branch to influence a congressional election, a direct attack on the principle of keeping the military out of domestic politics.

Shamefully, the Post’s excellent reporting was attacked by the paper’s hawkish columnist Marc Thiessen, a frequently unhinged apologist for Trump’s imperialism, who responded to the report about senior generals dissenting from Hegseth by fuming, “Whoever leaked this is a traitor and ought to be prosecuted.”

In point of fact, the leaker was committing an act of high patriotism, not treason. In a constitutional republic, the military is not the political instrument of either the president or the defense secretary. Rather, the military must always be nonpartisan. If top generals think the military is being pushed to the limits of its fighting capacity, the public deserves to know.

Hegseth is remaking the military into the image of MAGA: an army of white cis-male reactionaries who nurse fantasies of their macho prowess and love the catatonic self-satisfaction of living in a social-media echo chamber.

A perhaps more sympathetic interpretation might be that Hegseth is as much to be pitied as held in contempt. After all, he’s clearly incapable of winning a real war, so has to settle for the illusory victories of his troll army.

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Pentagon secretly installs military influencers in civilian roles

Conservative veterans with large social media followings have been hired by the Defense Department and are amplifying Pete Hegseth’s culture-war fights.

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Wednesday. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

By Dan Lamothe

and

Tara Copp

The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and corroborating material....$

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x ref

Libertarians against Trump

@libertyNoKings

🚨 Before Massie’s primary, @CynicalPublius ran a relentless anti-Massie campaign, called him a ‘toxic narcissist,’ his supporters ‘dimwits,’ even linked Massie fans to antisemitism. Turns out he’s Thomas R. Anderson, listed in Pentagon, assigned to a DoD office, the entire time

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THE RIGHT-WING SOCIAL MEDIA DOGE BOOSTER known as “DataRepublican” has, over the last two months, waded deeper and deeper into hot-button political issues. From Candace Owens to the six Democratic lawmakers who encouraged troops not to follow unlawful orders, DataRepublican, the nom de web of Utah mom Jennica Pounds, has been active on X, venturing far beyond the number-crunching work she did as an early Elon Musk booster.

What Pounds didn’t reveal as she grew her social media presence was that she was secretly working at the Department of Defense. Since July, Pounds has been a temporary “special government employee” for the Pentagon.

Pounds’s secret job spilled out into the open this week, after she erroneously accused Sarah B. Rogers, the State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy, of trying to entrap her for treason. Amid that flap, an X user critical of Pounds revealed that she worked for the Defense Department. The Pentagon later confirmed to me and other reporters that Pounds does work as a special government employee, but refused to explain exactly what job Pounds has or in which departmental office she works.

Pounds’s secret work for the Pentagon calls into question the motivations of several of her posts, such as when she took a jab at then-Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a Hegseth nemesis. It also raises serious questions about Secretary Pete Hegseth’s cozy relationship with outspoken conservative social media influencers, and whether it breaches serious ethical norms.

... $

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MMA

September 25, 2025, edition of Vigilance Elite's The Shawn Ryan Show

SHAWN RYAN (HOST): What does it look like if they get into, I mean — I don't even know what we would call it here. I was just gonna call it a TIC, a troops in contact. But I mean, you know, with the MS-13 gangs, the cartels, the Bloods, the Crips, I mean, you know, Hell's Angels, I don't know. You know, there's gang members all over the place, you know, tons of different gangs — I mean, what does it look like if MS-13 pushes back against the National Guard and happens to fire upon them? I mean, do they have ROEs or?

DANIEL DRISCOLL (SECRETARY OF THE ARMY): Yeah, I mean, I think, I think they would see the full might and fury of our United States Army. They would see the full might and fury of the most powerful government in the history of the world. And, I think the president and secretary of war have been very clear that we — they are taking a hard line, and that kind of violence is no longer acceptable in our nation.