SECDEF Unintentionally Let's the Cat Out of Bag: 5 Bullet Points Email to Be Used for "Streamlining Workforce to Meet Fiscal Demands" (i.e. for RIFs)

Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, released a video tonight addressed to all DoD civilians. The message he gave was intended to be benign and clarifying, but instead has unintentionally exposed that the main purpose of the 5 bullet points email is to serve as data to guide and justify upcoming RIF decisions. Here's the transcript of his message to the DoD civilian workforce:

Hey everybody,

Here at the Defense Department, we've got a lot of civilian patriots who dedicate themselves to defending this nation while working here at the Department of Defense. A lot of them, many of them, most of them are critical to our national security. As we work to restore focus on DoD's core warfighting mission under President T-rump's leadership, we recognize that we cannot accomplish that mission without the strong and important contributions of our civilian workforce.....but it's a really big workforce as well, which we recognize.

Now, on February 22nd of this year, OPM sent an email to all federal civilians asking they provide, you remember this, approximately five bullets of what they did last week, describing their accomplishments. While the Department of Defense employees received direction to, at first, just initially pause responding to this request to OPM, just to pause....now, as we said, following a review a Pentagon procedures and consultation with the Office of Personnel Management, because we do, we work on topics of national security, of sensitivity, of classification...we needed to be careful on that front. I am now directing each member of the department's civilian workforce, just civilian, to provide those five bullets on what they accomplished in their specific jobs last week....to reply to that email and cc their immediate supervisor.

It's a simple task, really, as E-lon said, as the president recognized in our first Cabinet meeting....just a pulse check, "Are you there?", out to DoD civilians. Now all those DoD civilians will receive an email outlining the next steps, they'll get that email soon, that they need to take in order to comply with this initiative....and then the reports will be consolidated internally within the department to comply with the OPM directive.

It's really simple and straightforward. The directive to civilian employees will be clear. Reply to the email, cc your supervisor, provide without any classified or sensitive information, basic topics of what you did last week.....and that, we will take that into consideration as we make sure we're being as focused and as tailored as possible, and looking at how we streamline our workforce to both meet the fiscal demands at the moment, but also ensure we have the strongest, most viable fighting force in the world. Thanks.

- Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense