# Department of Defense The **Department of Defense (DoD)** is the largest federal department and the executive organ of American military power — roughly 1.3 million active-duty troops, 750,000 civilian employees, and a budget approaching $900 billion. Headquartered at the Pentagon and headed by the **Secretary of Defense**, it houses the military services (the Departments of the Army, the [[United States Navy]] — which includes the [[United States Marine Corps]] — and the [[Air Force]], which includes the [[Space Force]]), the [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]], the operational [[Combatant Commands]], the [[National Guard]] when federalized, the defense intelligence agencies (the [[NSA]] and DIA), and the defense-technology and procurement apparatus (DARPA, the [[Defense Innovation Unit]], and the contracting pipeline that runs through Anduril, Palantir, SpaceX, [[Scale AI]], and programs like [[Golden Dome]] and Thunderforge tracked elsewhere in the KB's Deal files). It was created in 1947 by the National Security Act, consolidating the older War and Navy departments. For the KB, the DoD is where two threads converge: the **politicization of the military** (loyalty over professionalism in the officer corps) and the question of **turning the military inward** (domestic deployment against cities and protesters). ## Leadership and the "Department of War" renaming (2025) **[[Pete Hegseth]]** — the former [[Fox News]] host — was confirmed as the 29th Secretary of Defense on January 25, 2025, in a 51–50 vote with the Vice President breaking the tie, one of the most contested Cabinet confirmations of the cohort. On **September 5, 2025**, Trump signed **Executive Order 14347, "Restoring the United States Department of War,"** authorizing the **secondary title "Department of War"** for the DoD in non-statutory communications — so the Secretary of Defense is now also styled the "Secretary of War." (Fully renaming the department requires an act of Congress; the CBO estimated rebranding costs from ~$125M up to hundreds of millions if made the legal name.) The change is substantively symbolic but rhetorically pointed: a deliberate move away from "defense" toward a more martial self-conception. ## The February 2025 officer purge On **February 21, 2025**, Hegseth and Trump removed much of the military's senior leadership at once — [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti (the first woman on the JCS), the Air Force Vice Chief, and several services' top military lawyers — many associated, in the administration's framing, with diversity initiatives. Gen. Dan Caine was installed as the new Chairman. The purge is the clearest signal of the second term's project to subordinate the professional officer corps to personal loyalty. (Detail on [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] and [[United States Navy]].) ## The capture lens - **Politicized officer corps** — removing senior leaders seen as insufficiently loyal or DEI-associated; the chilling effect on professional military advice. - **Domestic deployment** — the [[National Guard]] federalizations and the staging of active-duty troops for missions inside U.S. cities, implicating the [[Insurrection Act]] and [[Posse Comitatus Act]]. - **Counter-cartel militarization** — pushing SOUTHCOM (see [[Combatant Commands]]) toward direct action against designated cartels. - **Symbolic remilitarization** — the "Department of War" rebranding. ## See Also - [[Pete Hegseth]] - [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] - [[Combatant Commands]] - [[National Guard]] - [[United States Navy]] - [[United States Marine Corps]] - [[Insurrection Act]] - [[Posse Comitatus Act]] - [[Cabinet Departments Hub]] - [[Federal Agencies]]