The federal government’s bloated, outdated information systems have finally come under scrutiny. On his first day in office, President Trump signed a series of executive orders to cut waste and boost efficiency. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reinforced that mandate, spending his first 100 days reviewing the Pentagon “from top to bottom to ensure that we're getting more, faster, better, and more efficient.”
Earlier this month, Hegseth announced that in partnership with the Department of Government Efficiency, officials had uncovered $5.1 billion in savings — “and that's just the beginning.” That’s a good start. But if the DOGE hopes to prove its worth, it must confront the federal government’s disastrous record on IT spending and performance.
Companies should not have to wade through red tape at every agency — or even within the same agency — to deploy new solutions.
It can’t happen fast enough. A staggering 80% of the annual $100 billion IT spending goes to maintaining decades-old systems. According to the Government Accountability Office, “The older the systems are, the more the upkeep costs — and older systems are more vulnerable to hackers.”
Not only is outdated software expensive to maintain, but it also poses a significant vulnerability for our government — and that is particularly dangerous when it comes to national defense.
The Trump administration should make it a top priority to modernize federal IT infrastructure while also addressing how we got such a dysfunctional IT infrastructure in the first place.
In today’s AI world, government agencies cannot adapt to the most innovative and efficient technology when burdened with regulations often written before the internet even existed.
The Department of Defense is a prime example. The U.S. military buys IT systems in a ridiculously bureaucratic fashion. It takes years and millions of dollars for a company — regardless of size — to get its software approved just to pitch a product to the department. When time and money are of the essence, the only firms that can wade through the red tape are big, entrenched companies with lawyers and lobbyists to throw at outdated rules.
RELATED: How DEI took a sledgehammer to the US military’s war ethos
This procurement model directly clashes with how the private sector works. In the business world, innovators attract investment quickly. The Pentagon, by contrast, consistently favors large, well-connected firms over smaller companies and startups. Promising new technologies get ignored.
It’s the defense contractor model over the SpaceX model — and we’re paying the price.
Fixing the rules isn’t enough. We need to fix the people who enforce them. Right now, overlapping Defense Department bureaucracies oversee the procurement and deployment of new technology. A single point of contact — with one set of rules — would reduce red tape and create a unified standard for the department to follow.
That standard should reach beyond the Defense Department. Companies shouldn’t have to navigate a maze of conflicting rules across agencies — or even within the same agency — just to deploy new solutions. Procurement reform, including better training and clearer rules, must be a core part of the DOGE’s mission.
Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act made some progress, but much more still needs to be done.
Falling behind on technological modernization in defense is not just an economic disadvantage but a threat to national security. As the DOGE takes a much-needed axe to inflated government spending, let’s make sure we also cut burdensome regulations that hinder innovation and improvement. We must unleash the power of American innovation to equip our military with the finest tools — otherwise, our enemies will beat us to it.
The Department of Defense's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office was established in 2022 for the purpose of investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena, better known as unidentified flying objects.
In the wake of high-profile allegations by former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch and other Pentagon officials suggesting the U.S. government secretly obtained and reverse-engineered alien technology, the AARO reviewed — as required by the National Defense Authorization Act — all official government investigations into UAP conducted since 1945, researching both classified and unclassified archives and conducting numerous interviews.
The AARO claimed in a report last year that it "found no evidence that any [U.S. government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology."
The report noted further that the AARO found no evidence for claims that the government and private companies have been reverse-engineering alien technology.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this report constituted a cover-up of sorts, as it omitted a number of interesting discoveries the Pentagon investigators made over the course of their review, namely those regarding alien-themed psyops conducted by the military.
It turns out that in a handful of cases dating all the way back to the 1950s, the Pentagon apparently created and/or nurtured false narratives concerning alien technology in order to protect man-made secret weapons projects, to put America's adversaries off the trail of potential national security vulnerabilities, and, in some cases, just to mess with newly assigned officers.
RELATED: Scientists studying 'artificial' aerial sphere claim it came with a social justice message
Sean Kirkpatrick, the first director of the AARO from July 2022 until December 2023, reportedly discovered that some military officials' deeply held conviction that the military had special alien projects was the result of a "bizarre hazing ritual."
Over the course of decades, certain new commanders of one of the Air Force's classified programs were provided with a picture of what appeared to be a flying saucer during their induction briefings. The officers were reportedly told the aircraft was an "antigravity maneuvering vehicle" and that the program they were joining was part of a broader effort to reverse-engineer the technology on the aircraft.
'We know it went on for decades.'
After being confronted with what appeared to be evidence of alien technology, the commanders were told never to speak a word of it again.
Many officers told about the alien technology never learned that what they were told was apparently bogus — that is, until former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's office handed down the order to end the hazing ritual immediately.
Despite the ritual's retirement, former officers interviewed by Kirkpatrick's investigators apparently maintained the belief that the briefing and the claims therein were legitimate.
When former President Joe Biden's director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, asked an official about the ritual, the official reportedly told her, "We know it went on for decades. We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of people. These men signed NDAs. They thought it was real."
A DOD spokeswoman told the Journal that the AARO had in fact found evidence of fake alien-themed classified program materials.
Investigators at the AARO discovered that in the 1980s, an Air Force colonel disseminated fake photos of flying saucers at a bar near Area 51, the famous Air Force facility 83 miles north-northwest of Las Vegas.
The photos, which the colonel strategically provided to the bar's owner, reportedly went up on the walls, simultaneously feeding the local imagination about what kinds of activities were executed at the mysterious base and discrediting legitimate insights.
'He was screaming in the phone, terrified.'
The now-retired officer told the AARO investigators in 2023 that the purpose of the counter-information campaign was to mislead the world — particularly the Soviet Union — about what was actually being developed and tested at Area 51: the Lockheed F-117A stealth attack aircraft.
According to Lockheed Martin, the first flight of the F-117A took place in 1981. While it achieved operational capacity two years later, the craft and its development were not publicly acknowledged until 1988. It saw combat for the first time during Operation Just Cause on Dec. 19, 1989, participating in military strikes in Panama.
Kirkpatrick reportedly came across the tale of an Air Force captain's 1967 encounter with a glowing reddish-orange oval at a nuclear missile base in Montana.
One evening, Robert Salas, now 84, was parked at the controls for 10 nuclear missiles in a bunker, ready to lob weapons of mass destruction Moscow's way. However, he received a panicked call from the guard station topside. Apparently a red oval was glowing just above the installation's front gate.
Salas previously told the Calgary Herald that the non-commissioned security officer up above said the object "was making unusual, controlled maneuvers, such as flying very fast, coming to a dead stop, then reversing course and making 90-degree turns."
"He was screaming in the phone, terrified. ... I told him to secure the facility at all costs," said Salas.
Shortly thereafter, the control system for the missiles was disabled.
RELATED: Are UFOs real or a government psyop? Either way, it's extremely alarming
It wasn't at all clear to Salas what had happened, and he wouldn't soon find out. Salas, later told never to discuss the incident, could only speculate — and of course, he and his comrades did just that.
Kirkpatrick and his team discovered that the American government, not Martians, had disabled the missile system as part of an experiment to determine whether the missiles' concrete and steel containment was sufficiently thick to protect them against the electromagnetic waves created by a nearby nuclear detonation.
'The Air Force shut us out of any information.'
To find out, the Air Force reportedly developed a special electromagnetic pulse generator and activated it on a portable platform 60 feet above the nuclear installation. Once activated and powered up, it apparently glowed. The electromagnetic pulses were fired down cables connected to the bunker, disabling the weapons systems.
It seems there were no aliens — just Uncle Sam making sure it could answer one nuclear strike with another. However, Salas remains convinced that travelers from a galaxy far, far away attempted to intervene to prevent a nuclear war.
"We were never briefed on the activities that were going on," Salas told the Journal. "The Air Force shut us out of any information."
Salas told the Calgary Herald that his Feb. 15, 2023, phone call with an AARO official regarding his 1967 experience was "a milestone" because he had never previously told his story to a government office.
The Journal indicated that interviews with 24 current and former American officials, scientists, and military contractors and a small mountain of relevant documents served as the basis for the account of these counter-information efforts.
Elements of the military, particularly at the Air Force, reportedly sought to hide some details about these counter-information efforts, believing they could hurt careers and expose secret programs. That would explain why they were omitted from the 2024 AARO report.
While there might yet be proof of aliens, it appears that what Salas saw, what was shown in photos at a bar near Area 51, and what was described to generations of new commanders in the USAF wasn't it.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
For years, the stroke of midnight on June 1 triggered a corporate and bureaucratic avalanche of rainbow flags across America. Logos changed colors overnight. Government agencies raced to outdo each other in their displays of “inclusion.” From Walmart to the Pentagon, one message rang loud: Dissent from the LGBT agenda would not be tolerated.
This year tells a different story.
Conservatives tend to back off once momentum swings their way. They declare victory, let up, and give the left room to regroup. That reflex must end.
Pride Month 2025 has limped into view. The rainbow wave has receded quite a bit. Now is the time to send it packing — permanently.
The evidence lines up. Target, still smarting from last year’s boycott, scaled back its displays. Other major retailers stayed quiet. Their social media teams left June’s usual fanfare on the cutting-room floor. Under the Trump administration, government agencies that once issued rainbow-laced press releases now operate under strict orders to stand down.
The tone of the country has changed. Americans have grown tired of relentless cultural propaganda, and corporations — always sensitive to backlash — have noticed. When the incentives shift, so does the behavior.
This change marks a win. But it also poses a risk.
Conservatives tend to back off once momentum swings their way. They declare victory, let up, and give the left room to regroup. That reflex must end. The left doesn’t retreat — it regathers. Letting up now guarantees a resurgence later. We have Pride Month on the run. We need to chase it out of public life.
Don’t mistake temporary silence for surrender. The left hasn’t abandoned its agenda. School boards still promote radical curricula. Teachers’ unions haven’t backed down. Cultural elites remain committed to enforcing a worldview that blends LGBT ideology with abortion politics — united by their rejection of divine order. They’re wounded, not defeated. And this is the moment to press the advantage.
Victory doesn’t come from symbolic wins. It comes from sustained action.
Step one: We need bold churches. Pastors must speak clearly and unapologetically about what Scripture teaches. Romans 1:26-27 speaks plainly about rebellion against God’s design. The pulpit isn’t a platform for public relations — it’s a battleground for truth. If pastors go silent, congregations scatter.
We need men like Daniel, who stood firm in the midst of a corrupt regime and “resolved that he would not defile himself” (Daniel 1:8). A culture in crisis needs shepherds with spine.
If your pastor never addresses these issues, urge him to do so. The flock needs clarity. The country needs truth.
Step two: Congregations must reject the lie that LGBTQ ideology is normal. It isn’t. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture defines humanity as male and female and defines marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman. That’s not hate. That’s clarity.
Loving your neighbor doesn’t mean affirming sin. It means telling the truth with compassion — just as Jesus did when he told the woman caught in adultery, “Go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11).
Normalizing sin isn’t kindness. It’s cruelty.
Churches must function as sanctuaries of truth, not echo chambers for cultural conformity.
Step three: Take the fight to the institutions.
Run for school board. Run for city council. Run for state legislature. Support candidates who oppose the LGBTQ agenda and the abortion movement without apology. These aren’t separate fights — they’re two limbs of the same ideology. Both elevate the self above Scripture. Both distort what God created.
We need leaders like David, who stood before Goliath and said, “You come to me with a sword ... but I come to you in the name of the Lord” (1 Samuel 17:45). That spirit must guide our political efforts.
RELATED: How Christians can take back what Pride Month stole
Every seat counts. Every school board, council, and committee sets policy that shapes culture. Leaving them uncontested means surrendering the ground our children stand on.
This is the moment. The left is reeling. Pride Month isn’t gone, but it’s staggering. We hold the high ground. We hold the truth. And we serve the God of whom the psalmist declares, “The Lord is my strength and my shield” (Psalm 28:7).
So hold the line.
Don’t compromise. Don’t wait. Don’t hand back what you’ve reclaimed.
Chase this agenda from our churches, our classrooms, and our public institutions.
Pride Month is on the run.
Finish the job.
Last week’s coordinated propaganda assault from the Chinese Communist Party targeted President Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system for the United States. The barrage left Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth scrambling to respond.
No one should find this surprising. China has waged a “slow-motion war” for decades, guided by the strategy outlined in “Unrestricted Warfare,” a 1999 playbook written by two People’s Liberation Army colonels. The book lays out how to dominate a superior adversary without firing a shot — through economic pressure, cyberwarfare, and, most critically, information control.
America must build a permanent, sophisticated information command — one capable of delivering a sustained, strategic response over years, not news cycles.
Information warfare alone won’t defeat China, of course. But as retired U.S. Air Force Colonels John Warden, Larry Weaver, and I argued at “Winning Peer Wars,” it remains a vital pillar of national power.
China’s influence campaign exploits America’s open media environment, manipulating public discourse with ease. Meanwhile, the U.S. barely dents Beijing’s closed, tightly controlled information sphere. The imbalance grows wider by the day.
America must build a permanent, sophisticated information command — one capable of delivering a sustained, strategic response over years, not news cycles. Scattershot messaging and ad hoc counter-narratives won’t cut it. We face a disciplined adversary with a 25-year head start. Let’s act like it.
An experimental U.S. military unit capable of challenging the world’s most aggressive propaganda machines has existed — at least on paper — since 2016. The 1st Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual), or 1st JSU(V), remains in “suspended animation” today, dormant for lack of funding. Yet this unit, with minimal investment, could give the United States a decisive edge against China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other hostile actors waging nonstop information warfare against our interests.
The late Andrew W. Marshall, longtime director of the Pentagon’s secretive (and now dismantled) Office of Net Assessment, launched the unit based on SOFTWAR theories by developed this writer. These theories, taught in U.S. war colleges as part of the cyberwar curriculum, emphasized the strategic value of fighting not just with weapons but with ideas, information, and narrative.
Marshall assigned me the task of forming the unit. Assisting as action officer, U.S. Army Col. David Church brought exceptional organizational skill, helping to stand up the 1st JSU(V) in record time. The unit drew from a unique talent pool: 50 airmen and soldiers from the California National Guard, handpicked from a force of 22,000. These service members held civilian jobs in industries critical to information warfare — Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Big Tech. They were filmmakers, writers, engineers, marketers, and software experts. No active-duty force could match this blend of military discipline and private-sector mastery.
Despite the team’s potential, Obama-era sequestration in 2013 gutted funding just as the concept began to take shape. Temporary duty budgets vanished. Training and operations stalled. Only after California Adjutant General David Baldwin intervened — allowing Guard members to skip home unit training to work on 1st JSU(V) — did the effort stay alive. Even then, progress continued only because many volunteered their own time, collaborating online to refine the concept.
Today, the need for this capability has never been greater. China, Russia, and others wage a slow-motion war against the U.S. through disinformation and psychological manipulation. America’s open media landscape leaves it vulnerable to manipulation, while closed regimes remain immune to our traditional efforts. The Pentagon lacks a centralized, strategic response to this asymmetric threat.
The 1st JSU(V) could change that.
Re-establishing the unit with a permanent charter would give U.S. commanders and agency heads a direct line to elite information warfare specialists. These modern citizen-soldiers know how to dismantle enemy narratives and build winning campaigns for a global audience.
Take General Stanley McChrystal’s disjointed video on the “Eight Imperatives of Counterinsurgency” during the Afghanistan War. Had it been operational, the 1st JSU(V) could have salvaged that amateurish mess and made it effective, to say nothing of watchable. McChrystal’s ultimate downfall — his cluelessness about modern media — led to President Obama firing him. That failure was hardly unique.
In 2009, the Pentagon squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on information operations contracts in Iraq. The Defense Department’s own inspector general flagged the disaster in a report that same year: “Overall, the contracting process resulted in a contract vehicle that was not optimal and may not meet initial psychological operations requirements or user needs.” The IG also found “an internal control weakness” in media services oversight.
RELATED: Memo to Hegseth: It isn’t about AI technology; it’s about counter-AI doctrine
Translation: Pentagon brass didn’t understand the global media environment — and had no business trying to operate in it without real expertise.
That failure could have been avoided. The 1st JSU(V) had already shown it could rapidly extract actionable intelligence from enemy propaganda, including early Al-Qaeda videos. These Guard personnel demonstrated how to identify ideological weaknesses and disrupt enemy messaging by severing its link to target audiences — in real time.
This small, low-cost unit brings strategic firepower. It can undermine enemy influence, break propaganda pipelines, and deny adversaries a clean shot at shaping public perception. The battlefield has changed. We no longer need vast armies or trillion-dollar toys to win the information war. We need cutting-edge communicators with mastery of messaging, narrative, and digital terrain.
That’s exactly what the 1st JSU(V) offers. But without funding, this capability will continue to gather dust.
The Pentagon needs to act quickly. The speed of modern conflict demands an aggressive information posture. Information warfare dominates the battle space — from TikTok to Tehran. If the Defense Department wants to win, it must fully embrace the unique capabilities of our citizen-soldier forces.
The 1st Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual) proved it could counter enemy disinformation. The time has come to reactivate it and make its mission permanent.
Pete Hegseth and current defense leadership must recognize the moment. We already built the prototype. All we need now is the will to activate it.
Your son has been a Marine for what feels like an eternity. Only those who have watched their children deploy into war zones can truly understand why time seems to freeze in worry. What begins as concern turns to panic, then helplessness. You live suspended in a silent winter, where days blur and dread becomes your constant companion.
Then, in an instant, it happens. What you don’t know yet is that your child — your most precious gift — fell in combat 60 seconds ago.
This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives.
While you go about your day, unaware, military protocol kicks into motion. Notification must happen within eight hours. Officers are dispatched. A chaplain joins them. A medic may accompany them in case the grief is too much to bear.
Three figures arrive at your door. One asks your name. Then, by protocol, they ask to enter your home. You already know what’s coming. You sit down. He looks you in the eye and says:
The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 28. The commandant and the United States Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.
This moment has played out thousands of times across American soil. In 2003 alone — just two years after 9/11 — 312 families endured it. In 2007, 847 American service members died in combat. In 2008, 352. In 2009, 346. The list goes on. And with every name, a family became a Gold Star family.
For most Americans, Memorial Day means backyard barbecues, family gatherings, maybe a trip to the lake or a sweet Airbnb. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying these things. But we must never forget why we can.
Ask any veteran who lived when others did not, and you’ll understand: Memorial Day is not just another holiday. It is a solemn day set apart for reverence.
So this weekend, reach out to a Gold Star family. Acknowledge their pain. Ask about their son or daughter. Let them know they’re not alone.
This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives — not for accolades but for love of country and the preservation of liberty. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
They died for the Constitution, for our shared American ideals, and the worst thing we could do now would be to betray those ideals in a spirit of rage or division.
We cannot dishonor their sacrifice by abandoning the very principles they died to protect — equal justice, the rule of law, the enduring promise of liberty.
This Memorial Day, let us remember the fallen. Let us honor their families. Let us recommit ourselves to the cause they gave everything for: the American way of life.
They are the best of us.
Want more from Glenn Beck? Get Glenn's FREE email newsletter with his latest insights, top stories, show prep, and more delivered to your inbox.
God works in mysterious ways, including through the pages of the New York Times.
The legacy media and progressives have spent months fearmongering about President Trump's crusade against anti-Christian bias in the government and his policies that seek to protect religious liberty. They frame it as dangerous flirtation with so-called "Christian nationalism," wielding this label as a cudgel to demonize Trump and his supporters.
Instead of sounding the alarm, the most influential newspaper in the world just broadcasted the gospel loud and clear.
But in a bout of divine irony, the New York Times is now spreading the gospel — inadvertently, of course.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a 30-minute service at the Pentagon called the "Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service." In its breathless coverage of the event, the New York Times implicitly tried to connect the event — which Hegseth plans to host once a month — to so-called Christian nationalism and even suggested the Trump administration may be violating the First Amendment.
The tone of the article is clear: Panic! The Christian nationalists are taking over! Prayer in the halls of public power? Oh, no! We can't have that!
But here's the twist: The New York Times didn't only report on the event, but the newspaper quoted Hegseth acknowledging the "providence of our lord and savior Jesus Christ" and the "author in heaven overseeing all of this, who’s underwritten all of it, for us, on the cross, gives me the strength to proceed."
The New York Times even broadcasted Pastor Brooks Potteiger's message about President Trump, "We pray for our leaders who you have sovereignly appointed — for President Trump, thank you for the way that you have used him to bring stability and moral clarity to our land. And we pray that you would continue to protect him, bless him, give him great wisdom."
Even more stunning, the New York Times printed Hegseth's prayer:
King Jesus, we come humbly before you, seeking your face, seeking your grace, in humble obedience to your law and to your word. We come as sinners saved only by that grace, seeking your providence in our lives and in our nation. Lord God, we ask for the wisdom to see what is right and in each and every day, in each and every circumstance, the courage to do what is right in obedience to your will. It is in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we pray. And all God’s people say "Amen."
Amen, indeed.
Isn't this amazing? The New York Times — like the rest of the legacy media — wants Americans to be alarmed at what progressives believe is a dangerous blend of government and Christian faith. They want Americans to see public Christianity as something dangerous.
But instead of sounding the alarm, the most influential newspaper in the world just broadcasted the gospel loud and clear.
Jesus told His disciples to spread the gospel. And thanks to the New York Times, Hegseth was just handed a mega-microphone to give Jesus a platform.
This latest episode of anti-Christian fearmongering reveals how God, indeed, works in mysterious ways: As the media and progressive secularists campaign to "cancel" Christianity in public, all they actually do is supercharge its impact. The more they fight the gospel and try to silence Christianity, the more vibrant and visible it becomes.
In this case, the New York Times amplified Jesus Christ and made Him impossible to ignore.
www.theblaze.com
thefederalist.com