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On Saturday morning, I sat and watched the rain fall on the United States Military Academy as another generation of students marched across Michie Stadium and onto the Long Gray Line. This event stirred memories that I had not thought about in years. I graduated from West Point in 1973, and I opened a section to reminisce before a television interview later that afternoon. At the end of the ceremony, something very important had happened: for the first time in many years, I heard the first lecture at West Point that spoke honestly about God, work, sacrifice, and war.
The speaker was Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Years ago, after retiring from the Pentagon, I joined the Family Research Council and eventually became vice president for policy. In the summer of 2000, we had several interns, including a young Princeton student and basketball player named Pete Hegseth. He was intelligent, personable, disciplined and openly based on his Christian faith even at that time. My kids loved him immediately.
US Secretary of the Army Pete Hegseth congratulates graduates during the United States Military Academy’s commencement ceremony at Michie Stadium at the US Military Academy on May 23, 2026 in West Point, New York. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was announced as the 2026 commencement speaker just two days before the event. (Adam Gray/Getty Images)
Years later, I watched Pete emerge as a prominent television personality on Fox News, where I also spent many years as a military commentator. But beyond television, Pete served his country in uniform, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Army National Guard and later tirelessly advocated for veterans. That background earned him trust before 994 students sat in front of him on Saturday morning.
Unlike many novice speakers, he did not give a clean speech intended to offend anyone. Instead, he gave these future officials something they rarely hear from Washington: an honest account of their chosen calling.
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The keynote of Hegseth’s speech came from Isaiah 6:8 : “Whom will I send, and who will leave us? … here I am! That verse was even more appropriate. These young men and women don’t just collect diplomas as graduates of many universities – they become commissioned officers in the United States Army. Many will eventually lead soldiers into battle. Some will be sent to dangerous places within months. Some may not return home.
West Point has always understood that weight. Founded in 1802 by President Thomas Jefferson, this school exists for one purpose: to produce humane leaders who can defend the nation. Its graduates have fought in every major conflict from the Civil War to Iraq and Afghanistan. The motto – “Work, Honor, Country” – was not created for luxury or business success. It was built with sacrifice.
President Donald Trump and Superintendent of the US Military Academy Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland listen to the national anthem before Trump delivers the commencement address at the 2025 graduation ceremony at the US Military Academy West Point on May 24, 2025, in West Point, New York. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AF)
My graduation in 1973 occurred during another troubled period. The Vietnam War was winding down, although Americans were still dying overseas, the Middle East was unstable, and the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union dominated strategic thinking. Our first speaker was Admiral Thomas H. Moorer. My classmates entered an Army that was struggling through the most difficult changes in its history.
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Today’s educators inherit an equally dangerous and complex world. Russia’s war in Ukraine continues. China is openly oppressing Taiwan. Iran is fueling proxy violence throughout the Middle East. Artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, autonomous drones, and information operations are reshaping the battlefield faster than military institutions can adapt — and unlike the Cold War, this competition does not offer a long plateau of managed stability. In that world, Hegseth delivers a message that military culture has long needed to hear openly again.
For years, many military leaders and government officials behaved as if references to God or Scripture were somehow inappropriate for official ceremonies. Yet combat, of all human experiences, is where such questions are most pressing. Under fire, questions about courage, character, sacrifice, and eternity are not philosophical abstractions — they are immediate and important. Hegseth recognized that fact and chose not to leave it.
He also got straight to the heart of the institutional failure that has gripped the Pentagon in recent years: the military’s acquisition of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that undermine readiness and standards. Hegseth hailed the return of the good institution while reemphasizing “Duty, Honor, Country” as a framework for what commissioned officers owe their country. He reminded the graduates that the military exists to fight and win the nation’s wars – a point that should not need repeating, but in the current context, it clearly did.
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Combat ultimately solves all questions aside from ideas. There is no heavy frame for communicating with an enemy bent on killing, and the irreducible responsibility of an officer under fire is moral clarity — the judgment to act when information is incomplete, the courage to take responsibility for decisions made under conditions for which there is no training to fully replicate them, the faith to lead men and women in situations that will break anyone who is not focused on something beyond them.
One part of Hegseth’s speech stuck with me in particular. He spoke about his seven children at the event and said he would be proud if one day his son answered the call of the nation by saying, “Send me.” As I listened, I thought about the continuity represented at West Point – each graduating class joins a chain that goes back more than two hundred years. Each era brings different technologies, different threats, a different strategic context, but the republic’s dependence on men and women willing to put service above self remains the same.
Secretary of the Army Pete Hegseth and singer Kid Rock pose for a photo with soldiers in front of a helicopter. (@SecWar on X)
That fact stuck with me again as the Corps of Cadets sang the poetic song “The Corps” following the ceremony. Those words, sung for the first time on the steps of the Cadet Chapel on June 12, 1910, and by half of all West Point graduates since 1911, still echo faintly from fifty-three years ago. The Long Gray Line endures.
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That continuity is precisely what is at stake as today’s students enter an Army that is increasingly being shaped to make machine-assisted decisions, autonomous systems, and cyber capabilities unimaginable to their predecessors. As I explore in detail in The New AI Cold War and AI for the Future of Humanity, these technologies are reshaping the character of modern warfare in ways that raise deep ethical questions – but cannot provide the moral judgment that separates the leader from the tool. That judgment is formed by character, and character is shaped by the kind of honest reckoning Hegseth gives on Saturday morning.
America doesn’t just need professional bureaucrats. It needs leaders who understand both the horrors of war and the moral responsibility that comes with command – young men and women who are still willing to answer the ancient call that has called all generations of soldiers before them: Here I am, Lord. Send me.
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