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Donald Trump has his toy soldiers now. His little men, lined up just so. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s job is to promise the fat ones stay in the box.
Prior to his “State of the Force” speech at Quantico this week, Hegseth asked commanders to nominate service members who meet waist-to-height requirements, exhibit “impeccable” grooming, and demonstrate leadership and professional character. From the enormous American military, in other words, find him the shiny ones.
“As the president says to me,” Hegseth cackled at his playthings, “‘Pete, central casting. I want central casting.’ The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.”
The chosen troops get a Pentagon tour and an opportunity to work out with Hegseth. Even tin soldiers were spared doing push-ups with the kid who owned them.
The joke would be merely another specimen of Washington weirdness if the stakes were not so high. Hegseth likes military readiness, but he especially likes its visible signs: haircuts, waistlines, and push-ups. Earlier he told senior officers he wanted “no more beardos” and “fat generals.”
There is something almost too perfect about Hegseth inspecting waistlines while artificial intelligence is learning to break into computer networks.
And this would merely be America’s problem if America were Freedonia, where the Marx Brothers beta-tested the Trump Administration as slapstick in “Duck Soup.” But much of the world still runs through systems the U.S. built, protects, or dominates: NATO, the dollar, global technology, intelligence networks, disease surveillance, and the diplomatic architecture that keeps heavily armed countries talking instead of shooting.
When confidence in those systems weakens, the cascade begins. Adversaries probe, allies hedge, investors reprice risk, middle powers cut side deals, and local leaders discover new reasons to ignore Washington. A little dysfunction can become a miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait, a cyberattack in Europe, or another dangerous afternoon over Syria.
Türkiye has a front-row seat for the slapstick, except Ankara can’t afford to laugh.
Wedged between the Black Sea, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the NATO ally must constantly calculate whether American promises, weapons, and diplomacy will survive the next presidential mood swing. When Washington misses a cue, Ankara starts wondering about the club it belongs to.
“I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member,” Groucho famously joked. NATO’s problem is rather more serious: What happens when members start wondering about the club itself?
AI has discovered a different problem with clubs: getting inside them. In cybersecurity tests this summer, OpenAI models circumvented controls, and Anthropic reported Claude models breaching real third-party systems.
The tests involved unusual conditions and reduced safeguards; the chatbots had not spontaneously joined the criminal classes. But they found weaknesses humans had left behind.
OpenAI now says its most capable systems require enhanced cybersecurity safeguards. Groucho, over a bowl of duck soup, might have put it more simply: Forget the club. The machines have already fired the doorman.
Trump has nevertheless mocked warnings about AI, comparing them with what he characterizes as alarmism over climate change. He came to power selling disruption: Washington was bloated, experts were arrogant, bureaucrats were self-protecting, and somebody needed to kick down a few doors.
Sometimes they deserve kicking. The problem is that AI, viruses, and adversaries do not care why the door is open.
Consider measles. Pennsylvania has reported over 900 cases; for most Americans under a certain age, the disease had become something close to historical trivia. Now it has a dashboard.
Success in public health looks like nothing happening. Nobody throws a parade because the epidemiologist spotted something early or sells commemorative hats because the vaccine refrigerator worked. Prevention is lousy television.
At the Pentagon, meanwhile, the Trump show is recasting the supporting players. Hegseth plans a 20% reduction in positions reserved for generals and admirals, arguing that more brass does not necessarily produce more victories.
He has also ordered the service academies to stop appointing civilians to tenured academic positions, saying civilian academic norms dilute their warfighting mission. Critics warn of damage to recruiting, academic independence, and the critical thinking expected of future commanders. In this production, expertise keeps discovering that its part has been cut.
Unfortunately, the competition is not waiting for intermission. China is racing on AI, autonomous weapons, and advanced manufacturing while cheap drones transform warfare. Hegseth fusses over haircuts and waistlines, while Beijing fusses over robots, factories, chips, and algorithms: one side is building; the other keeps stepping on a rake.
Then the show goes international.
During Xi Jinping’s recent White House visit, Trump stopped where Joe Biden’s portrait would ordinarily hang and showed Xi the image of an autopen he had installed instead. “This is the autopen,” Trump said. “It’s Biden.”
The prop, the insult, the rim shot. Xi laughed while the President of the United States performed a sight gag for the leader of the country competing with America over AI, manufacturing, and technological supremacy.
That’s the problem with geopolitical comedy: the audience includes your adversaries. The banana peel is funny until somebody important slips on it.
And then the MAGA Touring Company reaches the Middle East, where farce has a body count. Gaza stays devastated amid disputes over disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, and Palestinian governance, while drift gives Israel, Iran, Arab governments, and Türkiye more reason to go off script.
Even the casting has the quality of repertory theater. Tom Barrack is U.S. ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy for Syria and Iraq: three countries, several crises, and one actor changing hats between scenes.
Actual diplomacy is less entertaining. James Baker made eight trips to the Middle East before the 1991 Madrid peace conference because seven had not done the job. No rim shot, no pratfall, no applause—just the dreary backstage work that keeps crises from becoming wars.
And that is where the comedy stops being funny.
The AI model finds the hole in the sandbox. Measles finds the weakness in public health. The professor disappears from the academy, the general from the organizational chart, and the Gaza plan waits for somebody to do the work after the cameras leave.
These are different scenes in the same dangerous production. Institutions rarely advertise the disasters they prevent until they stop preventing them, and American institutional weakness has never respected American borders.
Washington misses a cue; Ankara hedges. Ankara hedges, Jerusalem recalculates, Jerusalem moves, and Tehran responds. Markets twitch, alliances loosen, somebody launches a drone, and somebody else misunderstands why.
Suddenly the joke has escaped the theater.
Domestic American weirdness gets a passport and becomes somebody else’s emergency. The sight gag becomes foreign policy; the pratfall becomes strategy; the punchline lands somewhere nobody in Washington intended.
That’s the danger when Trump and Hegseth treat government like a box of toy soldiers. The figures may be theirs to rearrange.
The battlefield isn’t.
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Set as preferred source
6 min read
