U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a video speech yesterday on the cutting the Pentagon budget and Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). “[DOGE is] here, and they’re going to be incorporated into what we’re doing at DOD to find fraud, waste and abuse in the largest discretionary budget in the federal government,” he said, according to a DOD News release. He added that DOGE would be given access to systems—with proper safeguards and classifications—to first find redundancies and identify previous priorities not core to the department’s current mission and then get rid of them. “With DOGE, we are focusing as much as we can on headquarters and fat and top-line stuff that allows us to reinvest elsewhere,” Hegseth said.
Secondly, Hegseth said beginning immediately, the Pentagon will pull 8%—or roughly $50 billion—from nonlethal programs in the current budget and refocus that money on Trump’s “America First” priorities for national defense. “That’s not a cut; it’s refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building the force that protects you, the American people,” Hegseth said.
