Ben Freeman is the head of the Democratizing Foreign Policy unit of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute. They are coauthors of “The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America Into Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home,” out next month from Bold Type books.

The deadline has passed for reporters covering the Pentagon to sign a pledge requiring they use only official information — no leaks or inside sources — and be chaperoned by a military minder when they visit certain parts of the Pentagon, or risk losing their Pentagon press credentials. It’s a policy worthy of an authoritarian regime. If it had been in force in past years the public would never have seen the Pentagon Papers, and Congress would have been deprived of information about major defects in costly weapons systems.

Unsurprisingly, every major media outlet refused to sign the pledge — including even the MAGA aligned Newsmax and Fox News — meaning that all of their reporters are now required to surrender their Pentagon press credentials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared to welcome the refusals, waving goodbye (via X emoji) to three major media outlets — The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Atlantic — that issued statements explaining they deemed the request an infringement of the first amendment.

Contrary to Hegseth’s claim that his reforms are for the “warfighter,” his new edict could get them killed. Whether it be through having faulty equipment foisted on them or through claims of “progress” in forever wars going unchecked without the kind of rigorous scrutiny made possible by media access to whistleblowers and oversight officials, Hegseth’s press pledge endangers our men and women in uniform.

This is, unfortunately, just the latest salvo by the Trump administration against oversight and accountability at the Pentagon. Through a number of other steps, Hegseth has created a perfect storm for breeding corruption at the Pentagon, making this arguably the easiest time in history for waste, fraud and abuse to run rampant in the U.S. military.

In a May 27 memo, the Pentagon announced they would be slashing the workforce and budget of the Pentagon’s weapons testing office, the Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E). This dramatic reduction in the Pentagon’s testing capabilities comes on the heels of the Trump administration announcing massive investments in emerging defense technologies like artificial intelligence, a new F-47 fighter jet, and the proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system that is estimated to have a price tag of up to $3.6 trillion, all of which will require immense levels of testing and evaluation.

Former directors of the testing office were perplexed by the move, according to USNI News, with one arguing that, “It’s like sidelining the fire marshal in the middle of a wildfire.” Another former director worried about the impact on soldiers in combat, who have to believe “your weapons systems are going to work the way they’re advertised to work. And you only know that if you have a very thorough operational test and evaluation before you hand it over to the operation.” Pentagon watchdog the Project On Government Oversight even more bluntly warned that “Pentagon cuts to DOT&E could endanger troops.”

The Trump administration has also gutted the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General, whose self-professed mission is to combat “fraud, waste and abuse in the Department of Defense.” One of Trump’s first actions when he regained the presidency in January was to fire more than a dozen IG’s across the federal government, including the DOD IG. On Sept. 26 the Trump administration informed the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) — of which the DOD IG is a member — that they would not be given funding in fiscal year 2026, which began Oct. 1. This led to bipartisan backlash, with Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Susan Collins of Maine arguing that unless the Trump administration reversed course, CIGIE would have to “terminate important functions that help prevent and detect waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the government.”

In a Sept. 30 memo, Hegseth announced reforms that would effectively cripple the investigative power of the DOD IG. The result will be “not to have any meaningful oversight by the DOD IG,” according to Andrew Bakaj, a former DOD IG investigator, who added that Hegseth is “doing away with the independence of the IG.”

All of this comes at a time when the Pentagon budget has, for the first time, topped $1 trillion, and the Pentagon has been awash in corruption scandals.

These enormous impediments to oversight and accountability will not make America greater or stronger. In fact, they will very likely endanger the lives of troops on the battlefield who are given untested weapons, and lead to billions of taxpayer dollars lost to waste, fraud and abuse. These steps should be reversed in the name of security and democracy. If they stay in place, it raises an obvious question: What does the administration have to hide?