4. Department of Defense

Project 2025 link: 4. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (Need an expert/research here!)

WHO WROTE THIS CHAPTER? Christopher Miller. For those who think that name sounds familiar, he’s the retired Special Forces colonel who was picked out of nowhere to serve as Trump’s Senate-confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and then, after 3 months, his Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense. He replacing former Pentagon chief Mark Esper, who’d been fired by tweet for advising his boss that there were no legal grounds to use the 1807 Insurrection Act, (the deployment of active-service troops on U.S. soil) against Black Lives Matter protesters, and for helping Congress rename military bases named after Confederate generals.

Miller was in charge of the Pentagon on January 6, 2021, and was accused of delaying the deployment of National Guard troops for four hours so the mob that beat its way into the Capitol to freeze the Senate’s counting of Electoral College votes. His book, which featured his resentment towards the military industrial complex and, gave a pass to Trump that day, mischaracterized legislators as hysterical on their call for assistance from the Capitol and accused the Democratic leadership of hypocracy for criticizing the use of National Guard troops to violently clear peaceful George Floyd protesters for Trump’s photo-op walk with an upside-down bible with Defense Secretary Esper and a uniformed General Mark Milley trailing behind. Trump has mentioned Miller as his pick to lead the Pentagon if he’s re-elected.

We like this TLDR synopsis of Chapter 4 from Stop the Coup 2025

  • Warfare
    • Support allies to engage in, and shoulder, the burden of conventional warfare
    • Against Russia, US NATO allies should shoulder the burden of conventional warfare, limiting the US to a “nuclear deterrent” role.
    • adopt “irregular warfare” as a cornerstone of US military strategy and using this domestically as well as abroad
    • In a major departure, changing historic U.S. missile defense policy from ‘only deterrence’ to new adoption and investment in offensive missile defense
    • In space defense, reverse the Biden administration’s current policy, which is deemed “limited to defense,” (deterrence) to provide offensive capabilities.
    • Limit China and its nuclear military capability by supporting a Taiwan “denial defense”
    • Taiwan and Asian regional allies, with Australia, should create a collective defense model.
    • In the Middle East, the US should continue supporting Israel while pushing Gulf allies to patrol their own airspace and control their own missile defenses.
    • Importantly, the US must heavily invest to modernize its nuclear military capacity, since China and Russia are doing that. The US must avoid any threat of nuclear coercion, he argues.
    • Increase DOD support to DHS for domestic border security
  • Personnel issues:
    • Refocus the DOD on war fighting, chain of command accountability, protect lower level from wasteful spending, sifting security policies, poor program execution.
    • Increase recruitment to the military with, among steps, placing ROTC in secondary schools
    • Expel individuals with “gender dysphoria” (transgender individuals)
    • Cut “any public monies for transgender surgeries, or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers”
    • Counter DOD diversity initiatives: eliminate “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs” as well as “newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff”
    • Monitor military schools to remove “Marxist indoctrination;” eliminating tenure for academics deemed too liberal/left
  • Equipment issues
    • Force Design 2030, labeled “the most radical transformation of the Marine Corps since World War II”
    • Design a system to purchase new or experimental weapons systems without breaking the law but avoiding DOD regulatory red tape; boost U.S. military sales.
    • In a major step, reverse the historic U.S. policy of deterrence-only to invest and adopt an offensive missile defense policy and a space defense policy
    • Invest in the US CyberCom system as a critical priority
      • end CyberCom’s participation in federal efforts to “fortify” elections “to eliminate the perception that DOD is engaging in partisan politics”

Our own page-by-page deep dive

  • (Pg. 102-3) Allow the military into schools and force kids to take their tests. Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)—the military entrance examination—by all students in schools that receive federal funding.
    • The rich White men behind Project 2025 are looking to make the enlistment of poor kids and those of color to fight their wars more systematic.

      It starts on Page 102/103: “3. Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)—the military entrance examination—by all students in schools that receive federal funding.” (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-04.pdf)

      They’re using federal funding, such as Title I, as a screener, as it only goes to schools with low income and disabled students. This proposal doesn’t touch their own kids, who are safely ensconced in private academies and religious schools.

      What about all those universal vouchers that students are getting in numerous states? Won’t that put a lot of their target kids out of reach?

      No. Vouchers don’t guarantee that a school will take any particular student, and they certainly don’t guarantee that the voucher will fully cover the cost of tuition at a private school. In fact, many are raising their fees now to both increase profits and to protect themselves from having to deal with the kids of the poor and middle class.

      Losers of the voucher-wars will be dumped right back into now-decimated public schools, ripe to be seduced into becoming cannon-fodder for the interests of the rich, who engineered this trap for them in the first place.”
  • (Pg. 103) Kick the LGBTQ community out of the military. Exceptions for individuals who are already predisposed to require medical treatment (for example, HIV positive or suffering from gender dysphoria) should be removed, and those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service. 
  • (Pg. 103) Stop CRT and DEI education Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.