ArcaMax

PARIS — Just what the Department of Defense, which now self-identifies as the Department of War (pronouns: sir/yessir), needs: more testosterone. The Pentagon is apparently going to try winning 21st-century wars with 1980s-era action heroes.

Because surely if the U.S. isn’t sufficiently winning in modern combat, it’s because male troops aren’t manly enough. As for the females, well, War Secretary Pete Hegseth thinks some of them are too manly and had already previously insisted on getting rid of those who wanted to transition to men. So this new offer is apparently only for men seeking dude-to-dude gender-affirming care.

You may be relieved — or alternatively, horrified — to learn that as the U.S./Israeli war on Iran jacks up global oil prices like they're on a steroid bender, and US allies scramble to survive the post-American era, the War Department has identified the true national security threat: troops who might not be sufficiently jacked.

“I’m authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members, ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social media, adding that the initiative is meant to keep troops “on the leading edge of lethality.”

Indeed, what the American military lacks is testosterone-fueled readiness. If only soldiers — or warfighters, as Hegseth routinely insists on calling them — had the “biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” as he says.

Right — because modern warfare is but a series of physical combats requiring troops to look like they live at the gym. And everyone’s seen enough Hollywood movies to know that it’s the guy with the biggest muscles — Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger — who always ends up winning.

It’s yet another Hegseth central casting decision that comes in the wake of his “no fat generals” policy. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon. And leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look,” Hegseth said last year.

So why didn’t he just offer to pay for their Ozempic so they can slim down, if he’s now pursuing a similar hormonal strategy to achieve a similar cosmetic result? And can the women-to-men transitioners get in on it now, too? Or is it just the men who are allowed to participate in the new taxpayer-funded biological customization?

Hegseth's obsession with physical markers of masculinity also reflects a broader misunderstanding of what makes a military effective. By confusing physical stature with strategic advantage, Hegseth’s Pentagon runs the risk of preparing for the wars that he imagines rather than those that they actually face.

Don't get me wrong. Treating genuine hormone deficiency is a legitimate medical issue. The problem is that Hegseth makes a wild leap from healthy troops receiving appropriate medical care to hormonal treatment as some sort of military advantage. A fighter pilot, logistics coordinator, cyber operator, drone controller or missile technician does not become more effective on the battlefield because he has the testosterone profile of an action-movie star.

These days, wars are fought with everything except muscles. Artificial intelligence without human oversight recently caused a months-long fight between the Pentagon and one of its providers, Anthropic, around the same time that the same technology was found responsible for bombing more than 100 school kids in Iran in an alleged war crime. That’s the sort of thing that captures where the action and accountability is. Yet the incident reportedly still hasn't been conclusively investigated. Displacing the focus onto the basic biology of the rank-and-file and invoking the need to create a whole new budget line item to address it is a convenient way to detract from leadership failures.

Even with the remaining remnants of old school warfare, missiles are launched at the press of a button. How big do your biceps really have to be to smash it? And in the newer warfare trend, drones are all the rage. They’re guided by a combination of software and remote- control operators. How much testosterone is needed to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome or wrist tendinitis?

There is little evidence that raising testosterone levels in otherwise healthy service members translates into superior battlefield judgment, leadership, or strategic effectiveness. But we’ve all seen the effect of ‘roid rage at the gym. And it’s hard to reconcile that image with that of someone who outthinks their opponent.

The battlefield of the future will be won by whoever has the best intelligence, the best technology, the best logistics, and the best people making decisions under pressure. Is there an injection for strategic competence? Because that’s the only kind of health intervention that has any chance of translating into success. What would ever give Hegseth the idea that the answer is to look backward, toward the reassuring image of the warrior as a man made of strength rather than judgment? What a sad, pathetic, and outdated definition of true strength that is.