I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Tuesday Book Club, I share an idea from a book.
Trump-appointed United States Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned yesterday. Reportedly, the primary reason for his resignation was defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s blocking of Driscoll’s efforts to modernize and transform the army.
In May 2025, Driscoll had launched a reform agenda, the Army Transformation Initiative, informed in part by Ukraine’s experience with rapidly innovating new technologies such as drone warfare as they resisted Russia’s invasion.
In October, Hegseth summoned senior officers from around the world to emphasize physical prowess and appearance standards, while modern warfare experts said future wars will “depend more on cutting-edge technology, precision strikes and AI.”
Driscoll pushed back on Hegseth’s folly:
We will win with silicon and software and not our soldiers’ bodies… No one can predict the next war, but we cannot wait, we cannot fucking wait to innovate until Americans are dying on the battlefield.
Recently, an Army unit based in Europe that was specializing in drone warfare was ordered by the Army’s acting chief of staff to return to a focus on airborne infantry warfare. Acting Chief of Staff General Christopher LaNeve, who gave the order to switch from drone to infantry focus, took over after Hegseth ousted General Randy George from the Army Chief of Staff post in April.
In his book How Rome Fell, historian Adrian Goldsworthy argues that Rome gradually squandered its institutional capabilities by turning inward and engaging in civil warfare rather than attending to the health of the empire. From the book’s description:
Ultimately, this is the story of how an empire without a serious rival rotted from within, its rulers and institutions putting short-term ambition and personal survival over the wider good of the state.
Right now, we have a U.S. presidential administration focused on sowing internal divisions (a president who calls the opposition party “Dumocrats”), on physical fitness instead of technological readiness, and on building a ballroom.
The Western Roman empire lasted more than 500 years, and the Eastern (Byzantine) based on Constantinople more than 1500.
The current American empire dates back to just after World War II, less than a century ago.
Will we make it 500 years? Seems unlikely, as the country devolves into incompetence and internal rancor.