The Pentagon announced Monday that a review of the Defense Department’s Senior Service Colleges (SSCs) has been completed. According to Under Secretary of Defense Anthony Tata, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “directed a Senior Service College Task Force to conduct a comprehensive review.”
[NOTE: In February, Hegseth — a graduate of both Princeton and Harvard — discontinued all graduate-level Professional Military Education fellowships and certificate programs with Harvard and other Ivy League universities because they, according to Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell, “diminish critical thinking, have significant adversary involvement, or fail to deliver rigorous education grounded in realism.”]
Tata wrote that the mandate of the SSC task force was to “ensure these institutions are anchored in military history, strategy, high standards, meritocracy & overall excellence,” and thanked the four men who served on the Task Force, led Dr. Maurice L. Todd and including Tom Anderson, who writes online as Cynical Publius, and MAGA-aligned social media influencers Rob Maness, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who hosts The Rob Maness Show, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired U.S. Army colonel who writes for the conservative outlet Townhall.
According to Tata, the Task Force “delivered critical recommendations to strengthen our SSCs & prepare our military leaders to achieve peace through strength.” (The recommendations have not been released.)
You hired internet trolls to investigate the war colleges? https://t.co/bEtLNZBE25
— Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) September 1, 2026
The Washington Post reported that Maness and Schlichter have been hired by the Pentagon to work with Tata, an arrangement that Military.com said “raises questions about transparency” in the department, while noting Hegseth’s “efforts to influence the public’s perception of the Pentagon, including hiring right-wing press corps to cover the government department while ostracizing other news outlets, leading to lawsuits.”
SSC alums including Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, replied: “You hired internet trolls to investigate the war colleges?”
Hunter Stires, former Maritime Strategist to the 78th Secretary of the Navy (Carlos Del Toro, 2021-2025), and an affiliate of the U.S. Naval War College for more than a decade, replied to McGrath: “Yes, that’s exactly what they did.”
Michael Pratt, a USMA graduate (class of 1987), also replied: “How is this even happening.”