There is a lot of debate surrounding what the Pentagon should and should not be doing. Here at National Review, we take the position that, rather than indulge in self-destructive social theories or advance the Biden administration’s absurd stances on abortion, the U.S. military should focus on its basic responsibilities of defending the country and her people. It should not be hard for the Pentagon to stay on mission, do its job, and do it well. Only once those are done should the Pentagon begin to think about expanding its priorities.
As it stands, competency on even the most basic tasks in the Pentagon needs reinforcing. The Financial Times reported on Monday that, for years now, Defense Department workers have been mistakenly sending internal emails to Mali because of a typo. Rather than “.mil”, which is the suffix for military email addresses, some employees have been using “.ml,” the country code for Mali. The Dutch entrepreneur who first discovered the issue has collected 117,000 emails since January of this year alone.
When asked about it, the Pentagon noted that emails sent through official channels bounce back to the sender if an email address is spelled incorrectly (I would hope so) and that the Department of Defense will continue to discourage employees from using their private emails for official correspondence. What was not announced was a new measure to actively reprimand people who use their private email addresses — something that would actually prevent the Pentagon from making pen pals in Timbuktu. As it stands, it seems the Pentagon could care less about actually solving this problem.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon arrested a service member for leaking classified intel on social media. The leak was intentional and therefore criminal, but the incident also raised serious questions about just how many people have access to classified documents. The current case is not so criminal, but it’s still serious. We have dealt with the problematic use of private email addresses by government officials before. But a problem of this magnitude is embarrassing, and, when looked at in relation to past stories such as Teixeira’s, it paints a picture of a department that can’t walk without tripping over its own feet. How hard is it to train workers to only use their official email addresses? Why would you leave the problem unaddressed for a decade if you’ve known about it for that long? If three is a trend, these and other stories (including an almost incomprehensible failure of five audits in a row) show a culture at the Department of Defense that lacks even the most mundane level of competency.
Rather than turn itself into an engine for woke social engineering, maybe the Pentagon should relearn how to tie its shoes.