Pete Hegseth

Hegseth’s vision is more Starship Troopers than Starfleet Academy

​“Welcome to Starbase, Texas,” Elon Musk said from the stage Monday night, as the crowd whooped. “This is a city. It’s actually legally a city that thanks to the hard work of the SpaceX team, we built out of nothing. And it’s now a gigantic rocket manufacturing system. For people out there who are curious to see it, we’re actually on a public highway, so you can come and visit. Drive down the road and see the epic hardware. I think this is the first time that a rocket development program has actually been on a public highway.” ​Musk was hosting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon leadership, currently traveling the country

Pete Hegseth is a polarizing figure who doesn’t quit

Pete Hegseth’s Saturday begins with personal training. The Secretary of War, @SecWar on your socials, is very fond of working out with the troops – something most defense secretaries have done without someone dutifully filming the experience for Instagram. Then he heads off to the Reagan National Defense Forum, the annual gathering of war hawks, policy nerds and defense contractors in Simi Valley, California. Hegseth, the veteran of the Global War on Terror, is there to fulfill his mission of denouncing the neocons. “Out with idealistic utopianism, in with hard-nosed realism,” he declares, insisting the United States will no longer be “distracted by democracy-building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate