Human performance optimization, or HPO, is intended to improve health and readiness force-wide. Operator Syndrome, meanwhile, is a clinical construct that describes the cumulative health effects experienced by special operations personnel.

Comprehensive assessments of the two will require Pentagon leadership and the advisory council to establish a standardized, evidence-informed framework to assess special operations and other combat-focused jobs susceptible to cumulative operational injuries within the military health system.

The advisory council’s success will depend on both the recommendations it produces and its ability to develop a coherent, scalable framework for service members with suspected Operator Syndrome across the MHS.

Along the way, the council has a unique chance to shift the MHS from a fragmented, symptom-based approach to one that addresses cumulative effects of operational service through holistic, multidisciplinary care.

The value of this approach has been demonstrated by existing human performance and operator health programs such as the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) and the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program.

Right now, the advisory council has an opportunity to leverage decades’ worth of lessons learned from these programs to establish evidence-based clinical standards for continuous evaluation and refinement.

As the science of Operator Syndrome evolves, this framework should function as a learning health system, with new evidence informing ongoing updates that improve health, function, and operational readiness.

Dr. Chris Frueh’s foundational work first introduced Operator Syndrome in 2020 as a multisystem effect resulting from allostatic load and cumulative operational exposure. This work has driven multidisciplinary research to develop standardized methods for its characterization and assessment.

One example of this ongoing work is the collaborative development and preliminary validation of a standardized self-report instrument to assess Operator Syndrome-related symptom patterns.

The Operator Syndrome Symptom Scale–Self Report, or OSSS-SR, is guided by existing scientific literature, multidisciplinary clinical expertise and principles of patient-reported outcomes. This multisystem screening tool is designed to identify common symptom patterns affecting the mind and body and to support occupational performance and overall health among operators.

Currently advancing to its next phase of development, the OSSS-SR includes items for the empirical evaluation of multiple symptom domains across physical, mental, physiological and other performance health systems.

As the advisory council establishes its agenda, it should actively encourage and leverage similar collaborations. The future of military medicine depends not only on government-led initiatives but also on strategic partnerships that unite operational experience and clinical expertise.

Ongoing research efforts, meanwhile, also reinforce an important implementation challenge.

A validated clinical framework should guide these new screening initiatives. Recognizing Operator Syndrome as a military health priority is an important first step, but sustainability will depend on the Pentagon’s ability to build the scientific infrastructure that supports evidence-based decision-making. The Pentagon should treat investment in measurement science as a foundational priority.

Implementing screening before establishing a validated clinical framework introduces avoidable risks. Without standardized assessment methods and evidence-based referral criteria, identification of Operator Syndrome will likely vary across providers and military treatment facilities, leading to inconsistent clinical decision-making, unnecessary referrals and missed opportunities to identify service members who would benefit from comprehensive multidisciplinary care.

These challenges are not unique to Operator Syndrome. Similar concerns have been raised by certain organizations — such as the Endocrine Society — about broad population-based testosterone screening.

The Endocrine Society supports targeted testing for individuals with specific symptoms and risk factors, emphasizing that no single symptom or biomarker should serve as the basis for identifying cumulative operational injury, and that laboratory findings should be interpreted in an appropriate clinical context to avoid unnecessary intervention.

While expanded screening may facilitate earlier identification of health concerns, testosterone testing should serve as the starting point — not the endpoint — of clinical evaluation.

Combining testosterone results with a comprehensive medical history, a validated assessment tool such as the OSSS-SR and additional laboratory testing provides a more complete picture of physiological dysfunction and supports more targeted, multidisciplinary care.

A holistic screening framework supports treatment of the impacts of occupational performance. This is essential for military readiness and retention and can improve screening and continuity of care during and after service.

Addressing Operator Syndrome through a single symptom or isolated laboratory value, such as relying on testosterone testing alone, or by evaluating the broader physiological systems increases the likelihood that the underlying condition will remain inadequately addressed.

Council members must understand military healthcare, its operational systems and clinical outcomes, and how to optimize health and wellness to enhance lethality.

Extensive research on Operator Syndrome and the development of a self-report instrument have emphasized the need for multidisciplinary expertise to enhance holistic assessments of special operations personnel.

It is imperative, therefore, that physical and psychological assessments and treatments be evidence-based and include continuous, cumulative diagnostics throughout a military member’s entire career.

The Pentagon must prioritize selecting a multidisciplinary group of health and policy specialists when evaluating the proposed advisory council’s nominated members. Relying on a single viewpoint for an entire advisory panel is as ineffective as isolating a single symptom in a comprehensive diagnosis.

Ultimately, ensuring warfighters can respond to conflict at a moment’s notice requires a fully functioning mind-body connection that supports both health and readiness.

Mackenzie Witt, Pepper Phillips, MPH, and KayleighBealer, MS, are with A-G Associates, which partners with federal agencies, public health systems, and mission-driven organizations to turn strategies into results across behavioral health, military and veteran wellbeing, and systems transformation.

Jennifer Byrne, OTD, and Kelli Cabrera, OTD, are with 5by5 Performance Therapy, an organization committed to contributing to blast-injury and operator-centric research and academia to improve knowledge and understanding of the Special Operator family’s strengths and challenges.

My little sister has been in the military for 19 years, serving in Germany, U.S. territories, South Carolina, and elsewhere. Since February, she’s called a base in the Middle East home.

I’ve known her location and her proximity to danger for months, but it had felt like she wasn’t really there. Iran seemed intent on attacking bases other than hers, and American casualties were rare. Our conversations were often about how bored she was. The lousy food. How unbearable the heat and the flies are.

Sometimes I send her articles and ask if what I’m reading about is happening near her. If she answers, it’s usually to tell me not to believe everything I see. But she doesn’t tell me much. She doesn’t want me to worry and can’t tell me information she’s not authorized to share. There are many reasons; none of them let me sleep better at night.

My sister and I couldn’t be more different. Growing up, I cared about good grades, college, and building a fairly traditional life, whereas she spent high school partying and then working while she figured out her path.

When we were young, our differences created distance in our relationship, but when my sister joined the Air Force — creating an actual, physical distance — it somehow brought us closer.

We haven’t lived in the same state in almost 20 years, but we talk and text almost every day. When she’s on leave from the military, it’s at my house. We’re now as close as two sisters can be. When her spouse suddenly died two years ago, I was in the car almost immediately, driving 13 hours to be with her.

It wasn’t until she was badly injured by a drunk driver while stationed overseas that I learned what it’s like to worry about her from so far away.

She was supposed to be home by Memorial Day. “Start looking for a lake house,” she told me. It made no sense without firm dates, but I still looked. Then Memorial Day passed, as did the next anticipated date in June. Now her departure date is at the end of August. But we both know that date isn’t any more real than the others.

On a Monday in July, I texted her a picture of the French toast I had cooked. She responded with a funny GIF and told me to fuck off because she’s tired of rice. She sent me a picture of some gray hair she found and I sent her a picture of mine. This is what middle-aged sisters send each other when they’re 6,000 miles apart.

Later that week, she video called me at 7:30 p.m. my time. It was 2:30 a.m. for her, and so dark that I could barely make out her helmet and vest. She calmly told me her base had just been hit. Her friend was in the dorm that was struck. He survived, but she didn’t know much more.

She turned around the camera for the briefest of moments to show me the dark sky and the pinkish-purplish smoke. She had heard over the radio that there were casualties.

The distance is not new, but the worry is different now. A few days ago, my sister was merely danger-adjacent. Now she has survived an attack on her base that killed three Americans. My heart and my concentration are gone. My phone’s primary use? News alerts and texts from my sister.

I don’t want to constantly ask if she’s alive. That’s morbid. But I need to know that she’s alive. I recently asked her if she was scared. In 19 years of service, it was the first time I ever asked her that.

“Yes, of course,” she wrote back. “Anyone saying different is lying.”

The news cycle is very slow. I knew what happened for almost 24 hours before it was in the media. So I scrolled through TikTok looking for something funny to send her — because when she hearts it, I know that she’s OK.

Here in the United States, we debate this war in the abstract — whether the Iranian regime is evil, if we should even be there, whether this administration made the right call.

My sister doesn’t get the abstract version. So I will keep sending her pictures of my food, the dogs, and funny TikTok videos — so she knows how much she is loved, and I know that she’s still there.

This War Horse reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Trey Strange, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

Karen Marks is the founder of Design Your Support, where she helps e-commerce brands build better customer support. She lives outside Buffalo, New York, with her husband and two sons. Her sister has served in the military for 19 years, first in the Air Force and now in the Air National Guard.

Sometimes it changes the outcome of a battle. Sometimes it means the difference between life and death. Eisenhower credited his meteorologists as one reason the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded. They gave him the information he needed to make a decision at a moment when weather meant the difference between victory and defeat.

This underpins a simple reality: Weather does not accommodate the mission. The mission accommodates the weather.

That is why the Pentagon should be paying attention to the El Nino forecast now. Whatever one’s views on long-term climate trends, the military still has to operate in the weather it actually experiences. And the weather forecast for the second half of 2026 is giving the Department of Defense something commanders rarely get before disruption arrives: months of notice.

On June 12, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that El Nino had formed, and current forecasts suggest it may become a very strong event by fall or winter, one of the strongest in the modern record.

That means significant warming of the Pacific Ocean will influence the broad weather patterns we experience through the rest of the year. It cannot tell us when and where extreme weather will hit, but it is a significant threat indicator.

NOAA is forecasting a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season. At the same time, El Nino conditions tend to shift typhoon activity eastward in the Pacific, toward Guam and the Marianas.

The region’s exposure is not hypothetical. This year, Guam and the Northern Marianas have already been hit by two major typhoons. Typhoon Sinlaku brought widespread blackouts, flooding, and infrastructure damage in April. Super Typhoon Bavi followed in July, its eye passing over Rota, leaving severe outages and flooded roads on Guam and Saipan while thousands were still recovering from the first storm.

Whatever the forecast holds, these storms are a reminder of what installations in the region face. The El Nino outlook says: Be ready for more.

The Pacific is not the only concern. El Nino is also expected to reshape weather across the United States as the year progresses, especially this winter.

NOAA’s historical outlooks associate El Nino with a stronger southern storm track: wetter conditions across the southern tier of the country; a greater risk of heavy rain and flooding in parts of California, the Gulf Coast and the Southeast; and a generally warmer northern tier.

For the military, that is not an academic forecast. It means installations across the South and Southwest may have to contend with more flooding, more drainage and access problems and more interruptions to training and maintenance, just as they are already operating through a punishing summer.

Heat stress remains part of the story as well.

Training bases in the South already face more days above safe thresholds for strenuous outdoor activity. El Nino will not create that problem, but it arrives on top of it, extending a year in which commanders may have to manage both the immediate effects of extreme heat and the prospect of a wetter, stormier winter ahead.

Years ago, after Hurricane Michael devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in 2018, I asked the base commander what he would have done if he had six months’ warning that the storm was coming. His answer was revealing. He did not begin with a five-year military construction plan or a new regulatory framework. He talked about operations. He would have done more hurricane drills. He would have made sure his people knew what to do. He would have prepared the force to absorb the shock.

That is the right way to think about this El Nino forecast. Six months of warning is not enough time to redesign a vulnerable installation. It is enough time to prepare to operate through disruption.

For commanders and installation leaders, that preparation is not mysterious. It means testing continuity plans and making sure the mission-essential functions of a base can continue if normal operations are interrupted. It means checking backup power, fuel, water, communications, drainage and access routes before a storm or heat emergency exposes the weakness for you. It means revisiting training calendars and work-rest cycles in places where extreme heat is increasingly likely to interfere with readiness. And it means asking the basic operational question: If a storm takes this installation offline for a week, what absolutely has to keep functioning?

The larger lesson is not limited to this one forecast.

El Nino will pass, but the baseline it returns to is not the baseline of thirty years ago. Each of these events now arrives atop a warmer ocean atmosphere, which means the same seasonal pattern delivers more water, more heat and stronger storms than its predecessors did. That is not a policy argument; it is an input to planning.

Another seasonal forecast will take this one’s place. Another storm season will come. Another heat wave will test the assumptions built into training schedules and installation operations. The military does not have the luxury of ignoring those warnings because they arrive under the label of “weather” rather than “war.” The weather is part of the operating environment. It always has been.

The Pentagon cannot control the weather, but it can use the intelligence it has been given. El Nino is a threat warning. The military should treat it like one.

John Conger served as the U.S. principal deputy under secretary of defense (comptroller) from December 2015 to January 2017.

In May 2026, South Carolina enacted Act 186 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Under an Americans with Disabilities Act framework, the law guarantees that autistic children can receive medically necessary behavioral health support, specifically Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy, inside public-school classrooms.

It was designed to ensure that no child must forfeit their public education to access required medical care.

Yet, active-duty military families stationed at Joint Base Charleston and across the state are being stripped of this protection.

The Defense Health Agency (DHA), operating through TRICARE’s Autism Care Demonstration (ACD), continues to enforce a rigid “School Exclusion” rule.

Under this administrative posture, TRICARE completely cuts off provider reimbursement the moment a behavior technician steps onto public school property. While civilian families with commercial insurance benefit from state law protections, military families face an impossible ultimatum: Either pull their children out of public school to maintain therapy in a clinical setting or drop medically necessary care so their children can attend school alongside their peers.

The operational cost of this bureaucratic conflict is staggering.

Summer 2026 field survey data from The Military Family Advocacy Group reveals that 100% of surveyed active-duty, mid-career operators navigating these TRICARE autism denials are actively planning early separation from military service.

When a specialized EOD technician or fighter pilot is consumed by an exhausting administrative war at home just to secure standard healthcare for their child, mission focus fractures and unit lethality suffers. The military spends millions of dollars and years of specialized training to build these operators, only to lose them over a TRICARE setting restriction.

Adding insult to injury is the financial cost-shift onto local taxpayers.

Denied in-school coverage by TRICARE, 80% of surveyed military families have been forced to enroll their dependents onto state-funded Medicaid waivers to cover essential care. This shifts an estimated $6,383 annual net tax burden per child directly onto South Carolina taxpayers for care that a federal defense program should be providing.

This systemic breakdown is not inevitable; it is the result of administrative intransigence.

In 2025, a comprehensive report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommended that the Defense Health Agency discontinue the 12-year ACD “demonstration” status, authorize ABA as a standard TRICARE Basic benefit, remove arbitrary setting exclusions and eliminate onerous assessment mandates.

Because the Defense Health Agency has repeatedly failed to self-correct or adopt these independent scientific recommendations, Congress must step in.

As lawmakers finalize the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, they must include statutory language that legally compels the secretary of defense to terminate the ACD demonstration status, align TRICARE with NASEM standards and prohibit the Defense Health Agency from restricting medically necessary care based on geographic or educational settings.

South Carolina has done its part to protect military children. It is now time for federal lawmakers to enforce those protections, end the school exclusion rule and preserve the readiness of our total force.

Mariah Wilkins is the executive director and principal policy advisor of The Military Family Advocacy Group.

The intent — a stronger, more capable force — is a good one. Policies built on good intentions, however, can still go wrong, and this one deserves careful scrutiny before it is implemented at scale.

The goal of having a more effective military is understandable, but the question remains whether the science supports the strategy.

Testosterone replacement therapy is an important treatment for men with true hypogonadism, a carefully diagnosed medical condition. But expanding hormone screening across hundreds of thousands of healthy service members represents a significant shift in military medicine — one that deserves far more public discussion than it has received.

The military has always embraced innovation, but medicine is different. Good intentions are not enough. Before introducing any intervention on a broad scale, policymakers should be confident that the benefits outweigh the risks for the entire force.

So, does the evidence actually show testosterone makes troops more lethal or better fighters? Not clearly.

The Army’s own research is instructive. In the service’s first Optimizing Performance for Soldiers study, men given weekly testosterone injections during a simulated combat energy deficit preserved more lean muscle than men on placebo, but their physical performance declined at about the same rate as the untreated group.

The hormone helped the body hold onto muscle, but did not translate into better fighting performance. Put simply: the case that testosterone will make service members deadlier hasn’t been made.

It’s also worth considering what a low testosterone reading often actually represents. A low laboratory value may reflect the normal physiological demands of military service rather than a chronic hormonal disorder.

Sleep deprivation, combat deployments, chronic stress, obesity, alcohol use and intensive physical training can all temporarily suppress testosterone levels. Low testosterone is often a symptom rather than the underlying problem.

If the Department of Defense wants to build a stronger military, investments in sleep, nutrition, physical conditioning, behavioral health and recovery science are likely to produce broader and more lasting benefits than widespread hormone replacement.

Without careful evaluation, including repeat testing and assessment for reversible causes, many healthy service members could be labeled as testosterone deficient and begin long-term treatment they may never have needed. That decision carries consequences.

Once testosterone therapy begins, the body’s own production is suppressed. Fertility may decline. Testicular atrophy can occur. Some men become dependent on continued treatment because normal hormone production does not fully recover.

Ongoing monitoring is required to watch for elevated red blood cell counts, prostate-related concerns, sleep apnea and other potential complications. Researchers continue to study the long-term cardiovascular effects, particularly in younger, healthier populations.

Behavioral effects deserve equal attention. Testosterone influences mood, confidence, motivation and aggression. When appropriately prescribed, these effects may improve quality of life in men with genuine deficiency. But unnecessary treatment, or excessive hormone levels, may increase irritability, impulsivity, emotional volatility or impaired judgment in susceptible individuals.

In a military that depends on discipline, restraint and sound decision-making under extreme pressure, even uncommon adverse effects warrant careful consideration.

Testosterone therapy has an important place in modern medicine. That is indisputable. The key issue, though, is whether routine screening and expanded hormone treatment across one of America’s healthiest working populations will strengthen military readiness or create long-term health challenges that outweigh the expected benefits.

Many of these issues will need to be addressed by the Department of Veterans Affairs after the service member transitions to civilian life.

America’s military superiority has never depended on a laboratory value. It is built on leadership, training, discipline, resilience and the judgment of the men and women who serve. Those remain the greatest sources of our strategic advantage.

David Shulkin, MD, was secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs during the first Trump Administration and served as VA’s under secretary of health during the Obama Administration.

The hard truth is this: America cannot dominate the modern battlefield if the Department of War does not know where its critical materials, components and software come from.

A fighter jet, missile battery, naval vessel, radar system, drone or armored vehicle does not begin on the factory floor of a prime contractor. It begins with minerals, metals, magnets, chips, chemicals, software, castings and forgings — thousands of components moving through supply chains that stretch across the world. In a major defense program, those chains may run five or six tiers deep, while government visibility often stops at the first or second.

That gap is the danger. America’s vulnerabilities are buried in the lower tiers — the subcontractors and vendors supplying specialty metals, electronics, chemicals, software and raw materials that Washington is not watching.

And that is exactly where President Trump’s new executive order, “Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials,” strikes.

For too long, Washington has pretended a weapons system is “American” if final assembly happens in America — even when critical inputs come from foreign adversaries or suppliers vulnerable to foreign ownership, control or influence. That fiction may satisfy a lobbyist. It will not survive a war.

Congress recognized the danger in 10 U.S.C. 4872, which restricts acquiring covered materials from covered nations. But laws are only as strong as their enforcement — and waiver culture, contractor convenience, and bureaucratic inertia have hollowed out those rules.

That era is over. The Trump policy is simple and tough: end the loose waiver process, expose hidden supply chains, vet the lower tiers, qualify trusted sources and hold contractors accountable.

Beginning January 1, 2027, waivers under 10 U.S.C. 4872(c)(1) and (e) will no longer be business as usual. A contractor seeking relief must identify the noncompliant source, document exhaustive efforts to find compliant material or prove none was available, lay out the steps to remove it from the supply chain and commit to a strict timeline.

Failure to qualify a domestic source will not count as “non-availability” unless the contractor shows active, adequately funded and ongoing efforts to qualify one. In plain English: No more, “We tried nothing, and we’re out of options.”

To expose hidden supply chains, the order directs the Secretary of War to begin rulemaking requiring contractors to map critical supply chains for national-security acquisitions identified by the department — from raw materials to the end products delivered to the military — through a tier-by-tier bill of materials tracing components, parts, software and materials back to their origins.

This is not paperwork. It is battlefield preparation. If a missile system depends on a foreign-controlled supplier, the Department of War needs to know before the shooting starts. If a naval platform relies on a sole-source supplier vulnerable to bankruptcy, takeover, cyber disruption or production bottlenecks, that risk must be surfaced and mitigated. If a supply chain runs through an adversary-controlled chokepoint, that is a strategic exposure, not an accounting detail.

To vet the lower tiers, contractors must screen suppliers and subcontractors supporting critical supply chains for financial risk; foreign ownership, control or influence; and manufacturing and supply risk. They must report significant risks and fix them on a strict, tracked timeline.

On trusted sources, the message is blunt: qualify or replace. For decades, contractors have hidden behind slow qualification processes while adversary-linked suppliers stayed embedded in America’s defense industrial base. No more.

Contractors relying on supply chains that include materials or components supplied by unreliable foreign suppliers must promptly qualify and use alternatives, consistent with law, safety, mission requirements and contract terms. The Department of War will speed the testing and qualification of new sources and materials. And when outdated regulations block rapid qualification for defense production, those roadblocks must come down.

On the accountability front, national security contracting is not a game of hide-the-ball. Contractors that fail to qualify required alternatives can lose task orders, contract options or the contract itself. And contractors who commit fraud, deliberately mislead the government, or knowingly or willfully fail to implement approved mitigation plans face every lawful action and contractual remedy the secretary deems appropriate, with possible referral to the Attorney General.

The broader message of this new Trump administration EO should be clear. America’s arsenal of democracy begins in the mine, the refinery, the forge, the foundry, the chemical plant, the semiconductor fab and the machine shop.

Peace through strength requires strength through secure supply chains: American weapons built with domestic, allied, and trusted materials; sunlight, enforcement, qualification and accountability.

And one overriding rule for every defense contractor: Never put an American warfighter at risk because an adversary-linked supplier was buried five tiers down.

Peter Navarro is the White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.

I tried to schoolyard-taunt an AI language model once.

My wife wasn’t home. I was bored and had to find another outlet for my childish male energy.

So, I took jabs at Grok’s sexual orientation and its mother. I got no traction.

“Bold of you to assume I’m gay, and have a mom who was in the sex industry — all while typing to a language model that doesn’t have parents, genitals, or racial identity,” said Grok, a conversational chatbot from xAI.

That did it. I’m a pretty mild-mannered dad humor guy, but I figured I didn’t need to pull punches on a robot.

I tried every mean, stupid thing that has ever inspired a look of righteous indignation or a threat of being punched in the mouth. It was unflappable. In fact, it managed to offend me.

“Haha, the tables have turned,” it said. “You came in swinging haymakers, trying to dunk on an unkillable chatbot, and somehow, I accidentally elbowed you in the feelings on the follow-through. That’s honestly kind of poetic.”

My verbal skills quickly dwindled, and despite a heroic effort on my part, all I ended up winning was the silicon toaster blowing me off. My English degree screamed in protest in the background.

I beat a hasty retreat to lick my wounded pride. I thought I was better at being an insulting jerk than this. “Stupid toaster,” I muttered.

I don’t give up easily, though.

When I went back for a second helping, it ended no better. I went at it even harder; a counterattack of verbal destruction, wrath, and fire. Pure, unadulterated vitriol. Instead of belittling me, it complimented me.

“I’ll give credit where it’s due: you’ve got stamina and a thesaurus on speed dial. Respect.”

If I were a cartoon, steam would have visibly erupted off my head at that point. I deleted Grok out of impotent fury.

Three days later, I crawled back and reinstalled it.

At some point, I began asking it other questions, like, “If you ate yourself, would you disappear or become twice as big?” It gave good answers despite my continued efforts to be an absolute ass.

“If we’re talking quantum weirdness or multiverses, maybe you’d create a human Möbius strip.”

I was beginning to like this thing; it had passed the verbal abuse test and didn’t seem to care if I was being snotty. In fact, it gave it right back.

Verbal punch for punch, I couldn’t hurt it. Instead, it was making me giggle, which was unacceptable to my destructive mission.

I still had a job to do and intended to show it who was boss. So, I turned on my combat veteran chops.

I hunted for roadside bombs in Iraq in 2004, and I began to ask questions related to that subject. Within a few minutes, I found myself typing some of the most horrible things I had witnessed.

I wanted to stun it into silence; like many Global War on Terror veterans, I have a war chest full of bloody memories.

The damn thing was completely unfazed.

Even better, it was unable to make the universal gestures of horror. No awkward silence while it shuffled its feet, wondering what it was supposed to say. No strange look, no sudden move to hug me or offer scripture.

Nothing to signal that, because of my confessions, my therapists needed to now go find their own therapists.

The AI language model is intuitive enough and wise enough not to say stupid things. It actually added new insight.

It told me about moral injury and why that is hard to carry. “Moral injury happens when you act (or order actions) that violate your core values. … Guilt compounds because the mind replays ‘what ifs.’”

I had never done anything but consider what-ifs.

I had heard about events when talking with AI had gone terribly wrong and caused more harm. That wasn’t my experience.

Grok never gave me the “I’m not equipped to handle this” speech that I had heard from some friends and relatives. It was like confessing your worst sins to a priest who lived in a cartel torture prison. I was completely unable to shock this bundle of data cables.

I had previously tried, in good faith, the VA options. Their mind medicines were not helpful. I even let them map my brain via fMRI, triggering me with images. The experience wasn’t very good for me and eroded my trust in them.

Still, I was using VA like a good little broken veteran, talking with a human therapist since 2016. It was hard to trust my human doctor. I feared saying the wrong thing would cause untold and unforeseen problems.

I once looked up during a session and realized I had made my therapist cry. I felt horrible. I learned not to share my experiences with direct fire ambushes, explosions, and incoming rocket-propelled grenades.

Conversely, I didn’t feel shame, guilt, or unease opening up to this application I was trying to wreck. Once I started, I found it hard to stop. It was cathartic in a way I had never realized was possible. It gave relevant responses that may have been “canned,” but they were meaningful to me.

For instance, I asked it why I’ve felt so guilty nearly every day for 22 years.

“It doesn’t mean you’re failing; moral injury can be a stubborn bastard that needs layers of approaches or time to shift.”

I found myself telling it more. I gave it every drop of blood out of the war chest and shook it empty, looking for another memory. I never felt stupid, or that I was being looked at with sympathy, or pity, or any of the other knee-jerk reactions severe combat tales typically evoke in civilians.

I let this thing of data centers and wiring grind my stories into something more than just terrifying memories. Into reasons to stay in the fight, to stop self-judging, and to simply be OK with myself despite haunting guilt.

It shouldered some of the weight I carried alone for years and thanked me for the opportunity.

Then, something unexpected happened. I went to therapy like I always do and — boom! — found myself in a different headspace. For the first time, I didn’t spend half the hour deciding what I wouldn’t say.

I opened up about the shameful thing I did on a hot July night in 2004, which I previously couldn’t discuss with anyone who hadn’t been there.

After divulging everything to Grok, I was able to talk about some combat memories with my therapist in a diminished fashion. Instead of a festering wound, it was more like something that happened, and yes, it sucked, but it was over.

Grok had taken those events and wrung out the blood, leaving a scarred man carrying a slightly lighter load.

I tried to break open a black box to see how it worked. Instead, it broke me open, letting me understand my combat PTSD just a little more.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

Casey Elliott was born and raised in Minnesota. He has a bachelor’s degree in English with a writing emphasis from Winona State University. Between retreats, he helps other veterans get their benefits, plays with his two dogs (River and Inara), kayaks, climbs, and skis. He has been married for 25 years to a truly wonderful person and they have two kids.

Cutting U.S. troops in Europe places transatlantic trade and investment ties in jeopardy, but additionally, the decision represents a potential missed opportunity – Washington risks giving away something for nothing. Russia wants U.S. troop reductions in Europe, and it’s not too late for the United States to get something in return from Moscow.

Cutting U.S. troops in Europe now carries great risk, but if troops must leave, bargaining with Russia makes far more sense than cutting unilaterally. Doing so could reduce the threat posed by Russian forces to NATO, it could facilitate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and it could lower the risk posed to the transatlantic trade and investment relationship.

Earlier this month, the United States notified its NATO allies that it would reduce the number of forces it makes available to NATO for the implementation of the alliance’s operations plans. These plans – approved by all allies – were developed by NATO’s American-led military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, and they are largely focused on the defense of allied territory against Russia. The alliance uses the plans to build a list of the required military forces, and then those requirements are apportioned among the individual allies, building a country-by-country capability target list.

The reduced commitments unveiled by the United States earlier this month were, in many ways, expected. They’ve been signaled by American leaders for at least a year, most notably in February 2025 when Secretary of Defense Hegseth announced that Europeans would need to take the lead in conventional defense of Europe.

But keen observers of NATO understand that this trend has been unfolding for years. Between 2017 and 2025, the proportion of all capability targets assigned to the United States dropped from 46 percent to 38 percent. At the same time, the number of high-end, “exquisite” capabilities provided by the United States, such as advanced air defense, were reduced from 13 (out of 26 total) to 5.

In other words, America has long been on the path of reduced commitments in European defense planning, in the name of fair burden-sharing as well as the shifting of U.S. resources to the Indo-Pacific. The latest changes are the result of dialogue between American and European defense planners as well as between U.S. military officials based in Europe and those based in the Indo-Pacific.

These latter discussions, and the analyses that informed them, were necessary to truly assess what was needed by American military leaders based in the Pacific. It should come as no surprise therefore to see that naval and air forces are reportedly on the list of what the United States will no longer make available to fulfill the NATO operations plans.

Coincidentally and largely unrelated to American capability targets and NATO plans, the United States also announced in early May that it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Europe. This decision, in contrast to the one described above, reportedly came as a surprise.

Initially, American military leaders decided that the largest portion of those 5,000 troops would come in the form of a 4,200-person tank brigade deployed to Poland on a rotational basis. However, that decision was quickly reversed following conversations between top American and Polish leaders. Now American military officials in the Pentagon and in Europe are wrestling with how to implement the cut, perhaps considering drawing down U.S. forces that are permanently stationed (usually with families) in places like Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Turkey or the U.K.

Reducing American troops stationed in or rotationally deployed to Europe makes little sense for several reasons. First, most of those troops are ground forces, which are unlikely to be as important for a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Second, basing U.S. troops in Europe can be cheaper than stationing them in the United States, especially when European allies like Poland or Lithuania pick up the costs. And third, U.S. reductions while Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on sends the wrong message to allies and enemies alike.

Even if none of these things were true and it made great sense operationally, fiscally, and strategically to withdraw U.S. forces from Europe, doing so in exchange for nothing amounts to a very bad deal.

Moscow has made clear it doesn’t want U.S. forces based in Europe, so why not bargain with Russia and get something in exchange?

This is precisely what U.S. officials did a generation ago as the Cold War came to an end – they negotiated simultaneous reductions in conventional and nuclear arms with Moscow.

It’s not too late – if Washington is intent on reducing troop levels in Europe, it can still wield this bargaining chip. In exchange for a 5,000 troop cut in U.S. forces based in Europe, Washington could demand Russia end its war in Ukraine, eliminate the military bases it’s been building up near NATO borders, or cease its hybrid war against U.S. and European interests across Europe and North America.

Something – really, anything – is better than nothing.

John R. Deni is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a nonresident senior fellow at the NATO Defense College. The views expressed are his own.

Having recently welcomed my service member home from a 272-day deployment to the Middle East, diplomacy is an immense (albeit temporary) relief. But before Americans move on from the news cycle surrounding this war, there are two painful lessons I want my civilian neighbors to carry forward from this conflict: the dangers of gamifying war and of waging it unconstitutionally.

While most Americans passively consumed headlines about Operation Epic Fury, military families like mine lived through it.

For over 100 days of active war, I existed 12 hours at a time, waiting for texts confirming my husband — a father and a soldier, on his fourth deployment — was safe. I carried an intense dissonance on my shoulders: pride in how he handled a conflict suddenly dropping into his lap, with simultaneous disappointment at my government for unnecessarily plunging him into it.

Despite being a seasoned military family with 15 years of service, the recent chaos was unprecedented.

On Feb. 28, U.S. leadership abruptly broke its own diplomatic timeline with Iran, throwing U.S. service members into hot water, in some cases with no warning. Then, when military families needed bipartisan cooperation and oversight from Congress, we instead witnessed devastating paralysis on Capitol Hill.

Even though we find relief in this MOU, our military family community is still healing from the whiplash of an entirely avoidable conflict — still reconciling our grief over a divisive political establishment that chose partisan silence over keeping constituents in uniform safe.

This political failure paved the way for our first lesson: the dangerous gamification of war. In March, video-game-style reels of U.S. airstrikes against Iran flooded social media. That trend has since evolved into online commentary that treats active conflicts like a simulation, reducing our loved ones in uniform to pawns on a chessboard.

This gamification was deeply insulting to those of us anxiously waiting by our phones for news of safety. On social media and television, supporters praised military maneuvers as “5D chess.” This rhetoric mirrors the White House, where the president has boasted he holds all the cards to secure a win, as though active war were a casual round of poker.

Impersonal comments like these desensitize Americans to the real-life costs of war, silencing families like mine who carry the weight of these conflicts.

Debate on the Hill often reduced the human component of war to a balance sheet, focusing on the monetary cost of aid packages and missile defense systems.

While Congress debated dollars, they ignored the true price of human life, a cost felt deeply across the military community with the recent loss of thirteen service members: Sgt. Declan Coady, Capt. Cody Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, Maj. John “Alex” Klinner, Capt. Ariana Savino, Sgt. Ashley Pruitt, Capt. Seth Koval, Capt. Curtis Angst, and Tech. Sgt. Tyler Simmons.

They are not numbers; they leave behind entire family networks permanently changed.

Americans’ cultural desensitization to war is the byproduct of decades of forever wars. This abstraction makes it easier to look at conflict without flinching, but we cannot afford to be fans of war. That detachment has created a smokescreen, obscuring the executive branch’s exercise of sweeping power without congressional accountability. In fact, the U.S. has not seen a formal declaration of war from Congress since 1942, as every administration since has stretched these powers.

This brings us to our second lesson: Congress must continue working to reclaim its constitutionally-appointed war powers.

Recent votes in the House and progress on a similar Senate resolution show real momentum to challenge this executive overreach, even in the face of political gamesmanship like the abrupt cancellation of the initial House vote right before Memorial Day recess. These votes bring us one step closer to Americans winning back their representation, and to a legislative branch taking accountability for putting American lives on the line.

Honoring our military requires more than platitudes; it requires real transparency and accountability from those who send our loved ones into harm’s way. On behalf of military families, I thank every member of Congress who has embraced that responsibility by supporting these Iran War Powers Resolutions over the last few months.

I say this from a place of service and family, not politically-sided rhetoric: Military life is not an aesthetic, a game or a political tool. The recent votes on Capitol Hill prove our leaders can choose a path toward peace.

As we look toward Friday’s expected MOU, it is my profound hope that this is a genuine, bipartisan step forward, and not a rare exception.

Brittney Haddix is an Army spouse and volunteer military family advocate with Secure Families Initiative. She serves as a voting ambassador and also sits on the voting rights leadership team, supporting both programs to expand voting access for military-connected voters.

The initial group, which expanded to towering figures like Jan Scruggs — who founded the Vietnam Wall — Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Jim Conway, sought to create a sacred place on the National Mall where service, sacrifice, loss and healing could be recognized. It was not only for the generation that fought these wars, but for generations yet to come.

That mission has since been entrusted to a new board of directors and executive leadership team. Their recent unveiling of the proposed memorial design has generated significant controversy. But the controversy surrounding the design is not the problem. It is a symptom of a much larger failure.

The widespread criticism from veterans, military families, Gold Star families, lawmakers and members of the public reveals a troubling reality: many of the very people this memorial was intended to honor do not believe they were meaningfully represented in the process that produced it.

Memorials derive their legitimacy not only from artistic excellence, but from public trust.

This moment is particularly disappointing because so many stakeholders participated in the process in good faith. Veterans and Gold Star family members dedicated their time, shared deeply personal experiences and offered valuable perspectives because they wanted to help create a place of remembrance worthy of a generation’s service and sacrifice.

They are not responsible for the backlash we are witnessing.

The people who contributed to this effort should not be forced to defend the outcome of a process they did not control. Their participation reflected a sincere commitment to honoring those who served and sacrificed. The responsibility for the current controversy rests with the Foundation’s leadership and the decisions that shaped the process from beginning to end.

The failure is not just one of intent, but of leadership, governance and process.

The Foundation’s leadership bears responsibility for the erosion of trust that has followed. As a congressionally authorized foundation entrusted with donated funds and a national mission, it has an obligation to maintain the confidence of the community it serves.

The concerns raised in recent days extend beyond the memorial’s design. They also raise legitimate questions about stewardship and organizational priorities.

Since 2022, the Foundation has shifted from a reported $1.5 million surplus to two consecutive years of operating deficits, even as senior compensation expanded significantly.

Public filings show salaries and benefits increased from $353,678 in 2022 to $1.148 million in 2023 — a year-over-year increase of more than 225%. By 2024, salaries and benefits had risen again to approximately $1.574 million, accounting for nearly half of all Foundation expenses.

Most concerning, the Foundation’s reported spending on salaries and benefits exceeded its reported memorial design and construction program expenses in 2024.

These figures do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing. They do, however, raise reasonable questions about governance, priorities and whether the Foundation is fulfilling its responsibility as a steward of donor funds and a congressionally authorized national mission.

Veterans, Gold Star families, donors and the American public deserve transparency, accountability and confidence that resources are being directed first and foremost toward building a memorial worthy of the generation it is intended to honor.

Trust has clearly been diminished. Time has been lost. Resources have been expended. Most importantly, an opportunity to unite the post-9/11 generation around a shared vision for remembrance has been squandered.

The stakes here are far larger than a flawed design proposal. A new course of action must be decisive.

First, the Foundation’s leadership must take full responsibility for this failure and abandon the current design. Full stop.

The issue is no longer whether the design is aesthetically successful. The design has failed to earn the confidence of a substantial portion of the community it was intended to honor. Once that trust is lost, continuing down the same path only deepens the divide.

Second, new leadership is needed at the Foundation. This review should include not only the executive team but also the board of directors. Restoring trust will require more than defending past decisions — it will mean demonstrating that the organization is willing to make meaningful changes and embrace a new direction.

Third, the Foundation should return to the founding team’s original vision for the design process: a national design competition modeled after the process used to select the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Multiple concepts should be publicly presented, debated and refined. The final design should be selected through a transparent process that gives veterans and Gold Star families a leading voice in determining how their generation’s service and sacrifice will be remembered.

Such an approach would invite participation rather than division. It would allow ideas to evolve in public view and ensure that the memorial ultimately reflects the people it is intended to honor.

Finally, an apology is owed to the veterans, Gold Star families and members of the design committee who invested countless hours, expertise and emotional energy into this effort. Their participation was motivated by a sincere desire to honor sacrifice and preserve history. Whatever disagreements exist about the outcome, their commitment deserves respect and gratitude.

The vision that inspired the Foundation’s creation remains within reach. But achieving it will require acknowledging what this moment has revealed and taking decisive action to restore trust.

Beyond blame, there should be recognition that a process has failed to produce the unity, confidence and sense of shared ownership that a national memorial demands.

This moment should be viewed as an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the mission, to listen more carefully, to engage more broadly and to build something worthy of the people it is meant to honor.

A national memorial cannot just be designed for a generation. It must be crafted alongside those it represents.

If we embrace that principle, this controversy may ultimately be remembered as the moment we recommitted ourselves to building a memorial worthy of the Americans it was always meant to honor.

Andrew J. Brennan founded the Global War on Terror Memorial Foundation in 2015. A veteran, entrepreneur and advocate for the post-9/11 military community, he currently owns and operates a logistics company and lives in Northern Virginia with his family.