Killing the Watchman: Why Gutting the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment is a Catastrophic Mistake

I. Introduction – The Death of the Pentagon’s Future

The Pentagon just shot itself in the foot. Again.

This time, it wasn’t an overpriced weapons system that doesn’t work or a bloated defense contract that gets canceled after sinking billions. Nor was it like the defunding of USAID - a corrupt bureaucratic grift machine that should have died decades ago. No, this was worse: the Office of Net Assessment (ONA)—the Pentagon’s last line of strategic foresight—has been gutted.

Most Americans have never heard of it, and that’s part of the problem. The ONA didn’t build weapons or command troops—it thought about the future, ensuring that the U.S. wasn’t caught off guard by the next military superpower or technological revolution.

It was the only office in the Pentagon that could think in decades instead of fiscal years. While the rest of the Department of Defense fights budget wars over short-term needs, the ONA focused on long-term existential threats—the kind that determine whether the U.S. stays a superpower or becomes the next fading empire.

Founded in 1973, the ONA helped shape Cold War strategy, anticipated China’s military rise before most policymakers, and pioneered early research into AI, cyber warfare, and asymmetric conflicts. It did all this on a tiny budget of about $20 million per year, a drop in the ocean compared to the Pentagon’s $800 billion behemoth.

And yet, it’s dead—shut down by an administration that either doesn’t understand its value or doesn’t care.

Make no mistake: this isn’t just bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s a strategic disaster. The United States is already struggling to keep pace with China’s military expansion and the rapid advances in artificial intelligence that could prove disastrous. By gutting the ONA, the Pentagon has deliberately blinded itself to the threats of the next 20-50 years.

This article will break down exactly what the ONA did, why it was dismantled, and why this decision puts America in a weaker position than ever before.

II. What Was the Office of Net Assessment?

A. Origins and Purpose

The Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was created in 1973 by a man most people outside of defense circles have never heard of: Andrew Marshall. Known as “Yoda of the Pentagon”, Marshall spent over 40 years running this tiny but powerful office, working under eight different presidents. His job? To keep America ahead of the curve.

Marshall and his team weren’t concerned with the next budget cycle or the latest congressional tantrum over defense spending. They didn’t care about Pentagon infighting or interservice rivalries. Their job was to assess the biggest military challenges America would face decades into the future and to make sure the U.S. was ready for them.

At its core, the ONA was different from every other part of the Pentagon because it thought in 20- to 50-year time horizons rather than the usual 5-year cycle dictated by defense budgets. This long-term approach gave it a unique ability to identify threats before they materialized.

Unlike most Pentagon offices that focus on immediate combat readiness and weapons procurement, the ONA was one of the few places that actually studied future wars before they happened.

Key functions of the ONA included:

• Predicting adversary military strategies and capabilities decades in advance.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of U.S. forces in future conflicts.
• Identifying long-term technological and geopolitical trends that could reshape warfare.
• Running deep strategic analysis without the influence of defense contractors or political pressure.

The ONA’s reports were used at the highest levels of government, influencing everything from nuclear policy to the development of stealth technology.

But perhaps its biggest impact came in one area: predicting the rise of China.

B. ONA’s Key Contributions

The ONA operated on a budget so small it was practically invisible—about $20 million per year. For comparison, the F-35 fighter jet program has cost the U.S. more than $1.7 trillion. Yet despite its shoestring funding, the ONA produced some of the most important strategic assessments in modern U.S. history.

1. Predicting China’s Military Rise

As early as the 1990s, ONA reports warned that China—not Russia—would be America’s biggest long-term military competitor. While much of the U.S. defense establishment remained fixated on Russia’s decline after the Cold War, the ONA saw the bigger picture.

They warned that China was:

• Building a massive navy to challenge U.S. dominance in the Pacific.
• Developing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) weapons, such as hypersonic missiles designed to neutralize U.S. aircraft carriers.
• Using economic and technological warfare to expand its influence in ways the Pentagon wasn’t prepared for.

Today, as the U.S. scrambles to respond to China’s growing military power, it’s clear that the ONA was right—but now, the office that made those predictions no longer exists.

2. Wargaming Future Conflicts

The ONA didn’t just predict wars—it ran deep strategic wargames to determine how they would unfold.

• It was one of the first Pentagon offices to simulate how AI and cyber warfare would change the battlefield.
• It studied how autonomous weapons, cyberattacks, and misinformation campaigns would shape future conflicts.
• It played a key role in shaping the Pentagon’s offset strategies, which led to advances in stealth technology, precision-guided weapons, and AI-based warfare models.

3. Providing Unbiased Strategic Analysis

Most military analysis is shaped by political pressures and defense industry influence. The ONA, with its independent budget, was one of the few offices capable of challenging Pentagon groupthink.

If a general wanted more funding for tanks, the ONA would ask: Will tanks even be useful in 20 years?
If the Navy wanted more aircraft carriers, the ONA would study: How will drone warfare impact naval combat?

This kind of uncomfortable questioning made the ONA unpopular in some circles—and that unpopularity made it an easy target when politicians came looking for something to cut.

The result? A small, independent office that had accurately predicted many of America’s biggest security threats was suddenly expendable.

And that’s exactly what happened.

III. Why Was the ONA Targeted for Destruction?

A. The Political Crossfire and Scandals

ONA wasn’t gutted because it failed. It was gutted because it got caught in a political storm it never wanted to be in.

Like most bureaucratic assassinations, the official reasons were budget efficiency and restructuring—but the real reasons were politics, power struggles, and optics.

1. The Stefan Halper Affair – The Convenient Scandal

If you’ve followed the Trump-Russia saga, you might have heard of Stefan Halper, the controversial FBI informant who played a role in the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign. What most people don’t know is that Halper was paid over $1 million by the ONA between 2012 and 2017 for research on China and Russia.

• While Halper’s work had nothing to do with his role as an FBI informant, Trump’s allies seized on the connection as proof that the ONA was part of the “deep state.”
• It didn’t matter that ONA had funded Halper long before Trump’s campaign—it was guilty by association.
• For Republicans looking to retaliate against the intelligence community for the Trump-Russia probe, ONA became a convenient target.

2. Budget Hawks Looking for an Easy Kill

At $20 million per year, the ONA cost less than a single F-35 fighter jet. Yet, some Republicans saw it as an easy cut to make it look like they were eliminating waste.

• Defense spending is notoriously bloated, but most of it flows through politically connected contractors who aren’t going anywhere.
• Cutting a small, independent office like ONA gave them a symbolic “win” while leaving the real waste untouched.

3. The Pentagon Bureaucracy’s Power Play

ONA wasn’t just independent—it was too independent.

• It questioned military spending decisions, sometimes contradicting what the Pentagon’s top brass wanted to hear.
• It challenged outdated military doctrines, making it unpopular among traditionalists.
• It didn’t answer to defense contractors, making it one of the few places inside the Pentagon that wasn’t influenced by the military-industrial complex.

For those in power, the ONA was an annoyance—and when the chance came to kill it, they took it.

B. A Convenient Sacrificial Lamb

ONA was killed under the guise of cost-cutting and restructuring, but let’s be honest: this was about getting rid of a politically inconvenient office.

1. The Budget Excuse is Nonsense

The Pentagon’s budget for 2024 was over $800 billion.

• $20 million for the ONA was 0.0025% of that budget.
• The U.S. wastes more money on just one failed weapons program than ONA cost in an entire decade.
• Cutting ONA didn’t save anything—it just redirected money to less useful bureaucracies.

2. Killing Independent Thinking

ONA’s death means that long-term strategic analysis is now controlled by the same bureaucrats who fight over short-term budgets.

• Without ONA, who is thinking beyond the next election cycle?
• Without ONA, who is challenging conventional military assumptions?
• Without ONA, who is watching China’s military 20 years from now?

The answer: No one.

And that’s exactly how the Pentagon bureaucracy likes it.

IV. Why This is a Strategic Disaster

A. The Loss of Long-Term Threat Assessment

Most of the Pentagon is short-term focused—thinking in five-year increments because that’s how budget cycles work. The ONA was one of the few offices planning for the next 20 to 50 years.

By gutting ONA, the Pentagon has effectively eliminated its ability to think ahead.

1. Who is Watching China’s Military Evolution Now?

• ONA was one of the first offices to warn that China would be America’s biggest military competitor, long before it became mainstream policy.
• It provided detailed assessments on China’s naval strategy, hypersonic missile programs, and economic warfare.
• Without ONA, the Pentagon is relying on traditional intelligence agencies, which are reactive rather than proactive.

2. Who is Thinking About Future Wars?

The next war won’t look like the last one. ONA understood that and was working on:

• The role of AI in future conflicts (autonomous drones, cyber warfare, misinformation campaigns).
• The impact of biotechnology and human augmentation on military effectiveness.
• Space and orbital warfare as the next domain of conflict.

Now, all of this strategic thinking is gone, and the Pentagon will once again be playing catch-up instead of leading.

B. Killing Strategic Independence

ONA wasn’t just about predicting the future—it was about providing independent, unfiltered analysis that wasn’t swayed by defense contractors, political agendas, or interservice rivalries.

By gutting it, the Pentagon has made sure that long-term strategy is now controlled by bureaucrats and generals who are more interested in protecting their budgets than winning future wars.

1. Military Groupthink Will Get Worse

• The Pentagon already struggles with internal politics, outdated doctrines, and resistance to change.
• ONA was one of the few offices that could challenge flawed assumptions about how wars would be fought.
• Without it, there will be even less oversight on how the military prepares for the future.

2. Contractors and Lobbyists Now Have More Control

• ONA didn’t answer to defense contractors or weapons manufacturers—it worked for the Pentagon itself.
• Without ONA, long-term strategic analysis will be outsourced to private think tanks funded by defense contractors—which means their analysis will be skewed to justify expensive new weapons programs, whether they’re needed or not.
• The result? More wasted money, fewer real strategic insights, and an even weaker U.S. military.

C. Short-Term Thinking Will Get People Killed

Every major U.S. military disaster—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan—was caused by failures of long-term planning.

• Vietnam: U.S. leaders failed to recognize that conventional military superiority wouldn’t win a guerrilla war.
• Iraq: U.S. forces won the invasion but had no plan for the insurgency that followed.
• Afghanistan: 20 years of fighting, trillions spent, and a disastrous withdrawal because no one thought about the endgame.

The ONA existed to prevent these kinds of failures.

Now that it’s gone, history tells us exactly what’s going to happen next:

• The U.S. will once again be blindsided by a major conflict that ONA could have foreseen.
• The Pentagon will scramble to react instead of having a strategy ready.
• American troops will pay the price for decisions made by short-sighted politicians.

This isn’t just bad policy—it’s a national security crisis in the making.

V. Conclusion – The U.S. is Now Strategically Dumber

The decision to shut down the Office of Net Assessment isn’t just another bureaucratic reshuffling—it’s a catastrophic miscalculation that will make the United States weaker in the long run.

ONA wasn’t a massive, wasteful program. It wasn’t some bloated defense contractor scam. It was a small, highly effective think tank that consistently helped the Pentagon anticipate future threats. And now it’s gone.

A. The Pentagon Just Killed Its Best Long-Term Thinking

By gutting ONA, the U.S. has deliberately blinded itself to the threats of the next 20 to 50 years. Without it:

• There is no office dedicated to forecasting future warfare.
• China’s military rise will be tracked reactively, not proactively.
• The Pentagon will rely even more on short-term budget politics rather than real strategic foresight.

B. The U.S. Military is Now Even More Vulnerable to Groupthink

ONA was one of the only offices willing to challenge flawed assumptions about how future wars would be fought. Now, without that independent voice:

• Military doctrine will become even more outdated and rigid.
• Defense contractors and lobbyists will have even more control over Pentagon strategy.
  • The next major war will be fought with yesterday’s ideas instead of tomorrow’s strategies.

C. The Worst Mistakes in U.S. Military History Were Caused by Short-Term Thinking

Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan all had one thing in common: no long-term strategy. The ONA existed to prevent exactly those kinds of disasters.

Now, as the world heads into a new era of conflict—with China’s growing power, AI-driven warfare, and global instability—the Pentagon has voluntarily thrown away its best tool for thinking ahead.

And the worst part? No one will realize how disastrous this decision was until it’s too late.

D. Slashing the Tires on America’s Getaway Car

In a world of:

• Rising Chinese military power
• AI-driven warfare
• Rapidly shifting geopolitical threats

Shutting down the Office of Net Assessment is like slashing the tires on your own getaway car—right before the enemy starts chasing you.

This wasn’t a cost-saving measure. It wasn’t about efficiency.

It was a political hit job that will weaken U.S. military readiness for decades to come.

The real question now isn’t why ONA was killed—we already know the answer.

The real question is: How long before America regrets it?