It is good to have a combat veteran as the new Secretary of Defense. It is also good to have someone who, while writing a book on the current state of the military, came to understand the difficulties service members face, why they choose not to resign or not re-enlist, and how hard it can be for some once they leave the service. That same research will also help you to eliminate the politicization that left the military hurting for recruits.

This understanding and experience will be helpful in correcting the course of the Department of Defense. Prioritizing warfighting capabilities and lethality over supporting the mission creep of bureaucracy is critical but antithetical to everything that is Washington, DC. The Pentagon was focused on budgets and bureaucratic infighting long before you arrived. The five-sided puzzle palace will fight back and has a long institutional memory.

Just remember, of all services and the department itself, only the US Air Force Airmen gave more money to Republicans than Democrats. There is at least one ray of hope.

For decades the military has had its combat forces slashed, bases closed or consolidated, and weapon systems and platforms reduced or retired—all while the Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, and Russians expanded their military capabilities and plotted the destruction of the international order Americans built. While the war on terror was lost by the very people who hate the fact that you are Secretary of Defense, you have an opportunity to right the ship before it is too late.

No doubt, you will receive more input on what you should do than you can possibly digest. Let me offer a quick list.

First, a sovereign state, by definition, controls its borders. That is a military function. Help President Trump secure the border. There is no such thing as acceptable illegal immigration.

Second, adopt the Weinberger Doctrine as your overriding strategy for the use of military force. You will never go wrong if you do.

Third, the military may be the best socialist system in the world, but it is time to overhaul the personnel system and bring it into the twenty-first century. The military is unique, but do not let that be an excuse.

Fourth, modernization and expansion of the nuclear arsenal must be your top spending priority. A bigger Army, conventional Navy, or conventional Air Force will not deter China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia; only a robust strategic and theater nuclear arsenal can achieve that objective.

Fifth, service members, particularly junior enlisted, have lived in toxic base housing for far too long. This problem should not make this list, but after two decades it has yet to be solved.

Sixth, remove the cancerous social and political activism that inundates the military. Nothing harms unity more than pitting servicemembers against one another because of their race, gender, or some other contrived distinction. Based on your initial actions, your efforts are already moving ahead.

Seventh, there is simply too much duplication across the services and within the services. Ensuring command opportunities should not lead to the creation of unneeded commands. The services are too small to be inefficient.

Eighth, expand the number of combatant ships, missile defense systems, and the combat air force. Neither the Navy nor the Air Force has the capability to wage a sustained campaign against a peer. Not only does the nation lack the delivery platforms, but it will go Winchester in a matter of days. Thus, every kind of weapon is also needed.

Ninth, take the time to reset the baseline and see what the military really needs to defeat the Axis of Autocracy. Is it drone swarms, missile technology, robots? Whatever the answer may be, it is unlikely exactly what we already have.

Finally, get very good at telling the American people why it is more important to spend tax dollars on the military than the entitlements they know and love. This is perhaps your biggest task. In 2024, the federal government took in $4.4 trillion and spent $4.6 trillion on entitlement programs alone. That is unsustainable. The federal government was never meant to take care of the health, retirement, and education of Americans. It was specifically tasked to defend the nation.

You have a big job ahead of you. Good luck. Americans want nothing more than your success. The safety of the country depends on it.

Michael Fincher is a Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Congratulations on Becoming the Secretary of Defense was originally published on Global Security Review.

Nano aquabots are a dual-use technology that can both serve humanity and cause harm. Research on 3-lamellar morphology of miktoarm terpolymers is also dual-use technology. Manipulating the crystalline morphology in a non-fullerene acceptor (NFA) mixture to improve carrier transport and suppress energetic disorder is itself a dual-use technology. Ignoring all of the scientific language, it is important to understand that these are dual-use technologies.

All these technologies are funded in large part by the US government, in collaboration with the Chinese government and institutions. The dual-use nature of these examples is instructive. First, nano aquabots perform a variety of tasks in aquatic environments, ranging from environmental monitoring to targeted drug delivery within the human body. Weaponizing nano aquabots would lead to new and bizarre sci-fi warfare.

3-lamellar morphology of Miktoarm terpolymers have unique mechanical strength, thermal stability, and chemical resistance, which are pivotal in applications ranging from aerospace because of their lightweight yet strong components to biomedicine potentially revolutionizing certain medical treatments and interventions. The 3-lamellar morphology of these terpolymers paves the way for advancements in nanotechnology.

The primary benefit of manipulating crystalline morphology in NFA mixtures lies in the enhancement of carrier mobility. Energetic disorder refers to the variation in energy levels within a material. For example, this disorder can impede the performance of organic solar cells by trapping charge carriers and reducing their mobility. Suppression of energetic disorder advances stealth technology. It can also be used to harden electronics to withstand extreme temperatures, humidity, and other environmental stressors.

We are at the beginning of a multifaceted quantum revolution in science (MQRS). This multifaceted scientific revolution is fueled by its own discoveries in artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum mechanics, and quantum computing. Imagine a hypothetical quantum battery that has the capacity to recycle its own energy as it continues to accelerate and deliver sustained power for exponential acceleration. The MQRS will, hypothetically, accelerate scientific discovery exponentially.

What are some of these facets that make this scientific revolution multifaceted? MQRS facets include revolutions in genetics, such as with techniques like CRISPR and gene therapy, biotechnology, nanotechnology, quantum mechanics, quantum computing, robotics, autonomous systems, space exploration, astrophysics, neuroscience, and brain-computer interfaces.

Unclassified research is available in peer reviewed academic journals such as the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Nano, Synthetic Biology, Macromolecules, Small Science, Emerging Microbes and Infections, Immunological Reviews, Journal of Computational Physics, Advanced Science, Advanced Materials, Advanced Electronic Materials, and many more. Funding research trickles down from the Department of Energy to labs such as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which, since 2000, is operated by the University of Tennessee and the Battelle Memorial Institute.

Other partners and funding include the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Basic Energy Sciences. Partners on the Chinese side include Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Croucher Foundation, Beijing’s National Natural Science Foundation of China directly under the administration of the PRC’s Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Foreign Technology Cooperation Plan of Guangzhou, China.

This sensitive and advanced research has the blessing of the US Congress under the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (STCA). Under this legislation, Congress requires the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce and the Central Intelligence Agency to report to Congress biennially on how the US-China STCA benefits the PRC economy, military, and industrial base, including the role of technology transfer and compliance with American export controls.  According to the Congressional Research Service’s (CRS), Karen M. Sutter and John F. Sargent Jr., “These reports have not been public; some that have been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests mostly do not provide the required assessments.”

The United States sees this as a tool to foster ties, address climate change, and advance science for overall well-being. According to Sutter and Sargent’s report, the benefits to American researchers is that they have access to large pools of research subjects and longitudinal health studies from China. This also means that Chinese researchers have access to American medical data, from databases such as those acquired through the 2013 BGI-Shenzhen acquisition of US-based Complete Genomics. Also noted in the CRS report, as China develops domestic scientific competencies, it increasingly seeks to restrict US access. In 2019, China cut off US access to coronavirus research, including US-funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. China withheld avian influenza strains required for American vaccines.

The MQRS will potentially accelerate until it hits an unforeseen black swan of a brick wall. China’s intentions toward the United States are not of the black swan variety; instead, they are of the plain-as-day white swan variety that Americans choose to ignore. And this is at a time when risks and rewards of the MQRS are growing more pronounced.

In short, Congress should remove China from its Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. Americans should not take part in driving Chinese technical expertise forward. American tax dollars are also assisting China’s AI-driven research in advanced fields such as energy-dissipative evolutionary deep operator neural networks. Such work has application to military purposes. It would be foolish to believe the Chinese will not use all of the technologies discussed here to further their advantage over the United States.

China wants to overturn the liberal international order. American naivete is one way to make sure they succeed.

Alex Littlefield, PhD, is the Chief of Staff at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and a Fellow of the Institute. He spent more than two decades in Taiwan and China.

Nano Aquabots and the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement was originally published on Global Security Review.