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The Net Assessment team discusses Frank Hoffman’s recent Joint Force Quarterly article about risk. They share concerns about the challenges that U.S. policymakers face in evaluating risk in a structured way. But they also fear that the solutions to these problems will require more fundamental changes to the U.S. bureaucracy than have been contemplated.

In the fast-paced world of modern warfare, the U.S. Army faces an urgent challenge: effectively translating battlefield insights into actionable processes and operational strategies. The gap between observing emerging threats and integrating those lessons into command structures and decision-making protocols reflects a systemic vulnerability in military preparedness. Bureaucratic inertia delays critical knowledge transfer — leaving operational units ill-prepared for rapidly evolving combat environments.

President Donald Trump tapped Michael Jensen, an Air Force veteran with experience in special operations forces, to take a high-level Pentagon job as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.
His nomination was submitted to the Senate and referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday, according to a notice posted on Congress.gov.
If confirmed, he would be responsible for providing civilian oversight of the U.S.

The White House is trumpeting a recent surge in sign-ups of new soldiers as a response to President Donald Trump’s reelection and return to office. But while Army recruiters have been on a winning streak in recent months, the service’s surge in enlistments began nearly a year ago as the Army overhauled much of its nearly $2 billion recruiting enterprise.
“We’re so back,” the White House posted Wednesday evening on X. “The @USArmy has achieved its highest recruiting numbers in 15 years, following a 12-year high in December.

One of the Marine Corps’ elite crisis response units used generative artificial intelligence tools during a lengthy deployment to the Pacific last year, amid a broader push by the service to onboard the cutting-edge technology.
GenAI models can leverage input data to create new content such as images, videos, audio and text.

Defense tech company Palantir and startup Enabled Intelligence announced a new partnership aimed at enhancing the quality of data needed to train artificial intelligence models used by organizations within the Defense Department and Intelligence Community.
Under the agreement, federal customers using Palantir’s Foundry system — a software-based data analytics platform that leverages AI and machine learning to automate decision-making — will be able to request data labeling services from Enabled Intelligence.

In May 2023, Fort Hood, Texas was officially renamed Fort Cavazos and while some have expressed outrage at the name change, it’s honestly just much more fitting. Over the course of 30 years in service, Gen. Richard Cavazos became a veteran of two of America’s most brutal wars, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross in each of them – and his first one was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. 
John Bell Hood, meanwhile, has been referred to as “the single largest mistake that either government made during the war.

Stewards of a martial heritage dating back to World War II, the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment is one of the service’s foremost infantry units. Before soldiers can count themselves among those elite ranks, they must pass the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, or RASP.
Historically, RASP has a 50% attrition rate — sometimes higher. The training is designed to break a soldier down and build them back up.

In 2021, David Auerswald wrote, “A U.S. Security Strategy for the Arctic,” which argued America’s current strategy in the Arctic was not sufficient to take on threats by China and Russia. With these risks still looming and a new U.S. administration in place, we invited David to revisit his article. Image: Russian Ministry of Defense In your 2021 article, “A U.S. Security Strategy for the Arctic,” you described the need for an updated Arctic Strategy.

William Blauser has been named as the new acting director of the Space Development Agency as the Department of the Air Force continues its investigation into the organization’s previous leader, according to a DAF spokesperson.
SDA is charged with development of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a planned mega-constellation comprising hundreds of data relay, missile warning and missile tracking satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit.
The department first announced Jan.