Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/03/29/secret-pentagon-memo-hegseth-heritage-foundation-china/

Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints
An internal guidance memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focuses on deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense. In some instances, the document is nearly a word-for-word facsimile of a report from the conservative think tank behind Project 2025.
March 29, 2025 at 3:23 p.m. EDT
By Alex Horton and Hannah Natanson

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented the U.S. military to prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, according to a secret internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications of text published by the think tank last year.

The document, known as the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance and marked “secret/no foreign national” in most passages, was distributed throughout the Defense Department in mid-March and signed by Hegseth. It outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the “near abroad,” including from Greenland and the Panama Canal.

The document — setting out a prioritization framework for senior defense officials and a vision to execute that work — also instructs the military to take a more direct role in countering illegal migration and drug trafficking.

The interim guidance is nine pages. Several passages throughout are similar to a longer 2024 report by the Heritage Foundation, some of which are nearly identical, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of both documents. One of the Heritage report’s co-authors, Alexander Velez-Green, is now in an interim role as the Pentagon’s top policy official.

Trump as a presidential candidate denied that Heritage’s Project 2025 plan, which set out a far-right transition agenda across the entirety of the federal government, was a blueprint for his second term. But his policies and appointments — including the Pentagon guidance — have made clear that Heritage’s plans have been deeply influential in the first months of his administration.

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