War Colleges

The System is What the System Does: The Anatomy of a Deep State Smear

2 September 2026

A nothingburger “scandal” was created by the leftist legacy media in their continual desperate search for something that will make SECWAR look bad and leave. In this lame case, a number of people–including STARRS Board of Advisors member Col. Rob Maness, USAF ret–were asked by the Pentagon to be on a task force looking at military colleges and professional military education. Because some of them have large followings on X, leftwing legacy media freaked out thinking that they were paid propagandists for the Pentagon. Nothing could be further from the truth but it is rather rich coming from this media who actually are propagandists for the Democrat party and their narrative.

By @CynicalPublius, retired US Army Colonel

I am one man.

All by myself, I am a vocal reformer for all that was wrong in the pre-Hegseth Department of War.

Other than my brief tenure helping out the Department of War in the Senior Service College Task Force, I have no affiliations other than working for myself.

Now read what I wrote below and understand that the people defaming me have ALL the affiliations. The entire military-related media/academia/NGO/thinktank complex is behind this effort to stall necessary reform and smear anyone who stands up and attempts to make a difference.

Once again: “You could stand me up at the gates of Hell but I won’t back down.”

The System is What the System Does: The Anatomy of a Deep State Smear

As some of you may be aware, the Washington Post recently published a smear article that claimed, through misuse of headlines and the deployment of X innuendo, that I am a part of some covert operation who was “secretly installed” as a social media influencer paid by the Pentagon to do its bidding. In other words, a defamatory narrative has been propagated that I am paid by the government to write the things I write on X and elsewhere.

This is a lie. (I’m not going to belabor that point here; if you want more details, please read my statement here, as well as this article from my fellow task force member, Kurt Schlichter.)

I have been the target of a sustained attack by the Deep State because I am a military reformer.

I am a retired Army colonel who stepped away from a still-promising military career to pursue a second career as an attorney. I decided I could better impact that military system by being outside of it.

Later, when I was asked to temporarily help reform a specific, narrow component of the U.S. military’s professional military education system from inside the Trump Pentagon, I answered that call out of loyalty to my oath of office that had never expired.

How else will reform ever happen if good people don’t work from inside the system from time to time to help fix it?

For all of this, I have paid a profound personal price.

Some of you may recall that after I was doxxed back in March how temperatures got so high that a lot of people behaved miserably, and I called for calm and asked no one to defend me against the forces coming at me. I was so alarmed by the unsolicited reaction of a small handful of my followers that I pledged I would stay silent on the people attacking me. I kept that silence for seven months.

No longer. While I have stayed quiet, the enemies of military reform have not—they abused my morality and good faith attempts to keep temperatures at a minimum by ratcheting up temperatures on their side. I will no longer tolerate that, and I am about to tell you the behind-the-scenes story of what the Deep State has done to me.

I will begin by describing what I believe the “Deep State” actually is in the context of the U.S. military.

The Deep State is an unofficial consortium of unelected federal bureaucrats, the legacy media, what I call the “Military/Thinktank Information Complex,” retired military members whose livelihood depends on propagating the status quo, military-related academia, NGOs (both foreign and domestic) and various useful idiots who blindly believe anything said by the foregoing.

Importantly, the Deep State is generally not some organized conspiracy. They do not have meetings. They do not have planning sessions. What little coordination they do is actually quite informal. No, they do not need any of that to be effective.

Instead, they are simply a group of like-minded individuals and institutions who are fanatically committed to maintaining the same status quo.

While they do loosely coordinate, they do not need a hierarchal organization because they all think alike and all have the same goal—preservation of the status quo so as to preserve the own unholy influence and power.

That is what I, a mere individual reformer with no affiliation in the Deep State, have run into at 120 miles per hour. My story is one that must be told.

In my case, the Deep State attacks came from four attack vectors, with three primary individuals personifying three of those vectors: Ryan Evans, Thomas Nichols and Dan Lamothe. The fourth vector is not a single person—it’s the army of unelected leakers inside the federal bureaucracy.

I want to repeat that I am not accusing these individuals and institutions of some sort of coordinated conspiracy—far from it. Like the rest of the Deep State, they did not need guidance; they did what the Deep State does and act like white blood cells swarming an infection. These men saw me as the infection, and each did their part to propagate a seven-months long campaign to silence my voice.

They failed.

Attack Vector #1: Leakers.

The first attack vector is one that empowers all the others.

Whenever you see a story that is sourced by anonymous “individuals close to the matter” you can be absolutely certain that those same individuals are dissatisfied, unelected bureaucrats who are displeased at the direction of their elected leadership.

They will do anything to protect their sinecures, up to and including committing crimes such as leaking classified information or illegally sharing personally identifiable information protected under the Privacy Act of 1974 with the legacy media.

Anonymous leakers are the gasoline that fuels the engine of the non-governmental Deep State components at every level.

Attack Vector #2: Ryan Evans, “War on the Rocks” and the Military/Thinktank Information Complex.

This was the vector under which my personal identity was first widely revealed. Back in February of this year, I authored an article entitled “Making the War Colleges Great Again.”

As I mentioned in my linked statement above, this led to me being asked by the Department of War to participate in a task force studying reform in the military’s Senior Service Colleges (otherwise known as “War Colleges”).

In no time whatsoever, “War on the Rocks” (WoTR) published an attempted rebuttal article which had a deliberate secondary purpose, in my personal opinion, of ensuring that my real-life identity was widely known.

While WoTR and the article’s author claimed that they were merely publishing information that was already publicly known, the reality is that such article immediately resulted in a swarm of harassing activity directed at me: death threats, attempts to have me fired from my law firm and all other manner of public lies.

As a result of this I had to engage personal security and this was in part the reason why I retired from my practice of law months earlier than I had originally intended.

This was the warning shot. This was the bloody horse’s head in my bed. The message was clear: “Back off, Anderson. More pain is coming if you don’t.”

Ryan Evans, of course, is the editor-in-chief of WoTR. Evans never served as a uniformed service member, although he did take part as a civilian social scientist in a hairbrained scheme of the Obama-era military of “Human Terrain Teams” that were intended to map the feudal society of Afghanistan in an effort to win hearts and minds. This effort operated on the naïve premise that a theocratic society that is among the most feudal and violent on Earth could be transformed through “understanding.” Evans built a career on that tenure. He founded WoTR, a quasi-publication, quasi-thinktank.

Both Evans and WoTR have deep connections to the pre-Trump military Deep State status quo. WoTR has an extensive partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton, a major U.S. defense contractor. In 2017, WoTR partnered with the University of Texas System (through the Texas National Security Network, launched under then-Chancellor Admiral (Retired) William McRaven, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command and a rabid hater of all things Trump) to produce the Texas National Security Review. At the time, WoTR described itself as the “Washington-based action arm” of that network.

WoTR also has a revolving door relationship with the Modern War Institute at West Point. Evans himself served as Assistant Director of the Center for the National Interest, a member of the Military/Thinktank Information Complex that has been funded by the Koch Foundation (with the Kochs themselves being virulent opponents of President Trump), he has lectured at the Army War College, he has lectured at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (which itself has trained U.S. military officers) and he is a fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, another member of the Military/Thinktank Information Complex.

Most importantly. Evans has been published in the Washington Post—the same propagandizing rag that has willfully caused destruction because I dared to disagree with their Deep State orthodoxies.

Put simply, both Evans and WoTR have deep and enduring connections to the pre-Trump status quo of the military Deep State, and my beliefs and efforts stand in stark opposition to their moneyed interests. Evans and WoTR did what white blood cells do and they swarmed what they perceived as an infection: me.

Attack Vector #3: Tom Nichols and Academia.

Once Evans had done his work, the torch of Deep State personal destruction was passed to WoTR contributor and advocate for the War College status quo, Tom Nichols.

Tom Nichols is a former long-time instructor at the Naval War College, is listed as a professor at Harvard, is a former fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics International Affairs (yet another member of the Military/Thinktank Industrial Complex), a staff writer for the propagandistic anti-Trump publication The Atlantic, a frequent commentator on the desiccated husk of MSNBC now known as MSNOW, and a rabid hater of all things Trump and Hegseth.

When I first started on the Senior Service College Task Force, Nichols knew, and throughout my actual work on the task force Nichols’ frequent goading X posts about me makes me believe that he was very likely receiving frequent insider leaks from inside the War Colleges in an attempt to discredit our work.

Through his constant social media commentary about me, it is my strong belief that Nichols was attempting to make me angry enough that I impulsively would reveal Controlled Unclassified Information to him. In that he failed, but his constant efforts at putting both me and the task force in a bad light nevertheless resulted in him amplifying the lie that my work for the Department of War was some sort of dark conspiracy to pay influencers out of the Pentagon.

(Also please note this link, which I will post again. Nichols knew as early as June 2, 2026 as to what I was doing, almost certainly through leaks from Attack Vector #1. He then spent months highlighting my service, putting abed the lie that such service was “secret.” Literally thousands of military and civilians at the War Colleges knew, because I visited their schools!)

No one personifies the opposition to War College reform more than Nichols. His entire reputation and career is built on his status as a former Naval War College instructor, and the Trump/Hegseth-hating media that he belongs to loves him because he presents the image of a knowledgeable insider who is ostensibly acting in the nation’s best interest.

In reality he is an academician who is plagued with all of the credentialist rot that infests the brains of almost all social science academicians in 2026. The Senior Service College Task Force, and my participation in it, represent an existential threat to the institutional bedrock of his career and professional reputation.

Put simply, Nichols has deep and enduring connections to the pre-Trump status quo of the military Deep State, and my beliefs and efforts stand in stark opposition to his moneyed interests. Nichols did what white blood cells do and he attacked what he perceived as an infection: me and the Senior Service College Task Force.

Attack Vector #4: Dan Lamothe and the Legacy Media.

Dan Lamothe is a “journalist” (I use that term loosely) working for the Washington Post, and he is the author of the defamatory article about me and the rest of the Senior Service College Task Force. (I don’t think I need to chronicle the details of the Washington Post’s affiliation to the Deep State. It is, in fact, the mouthpiece of the Deep State.)

That article is an interesting piece in its disgusting manner of creating innuendo that bears no resemblance to the facts the article itself states. Note the sub-headline:

“Conservative veterans with large social media followings have been hired by the Defense Department and are amplifying Pete Hegseth’s culture-war fights”

As an attorney, I can spot weasel words when I see them. Lamothe’s employer scurrilously creates the idea that the Pentagon pays me to post on X and write articles without actually saying that—the words are specifically designed to survive a defamation lawsuit. They imply without stating.

If you actually read the article, Lamothe states the true nature of our work and the meaning of the status of “Special Government Employee,” but those facts (the few true facts) are buried deep in the article where the people who only read headlines will never see it. Legal? Yes. Cowardly and despicable? Yes too.

Interestingly, Lamothe and Nichols act like they are pals. Coincidence? I think not. This is all networked. This is all part of a much larger group of individuals and institutions that fight necessary reform because it is in their personal self interest to do so. They are the white blood cells. I am what they see as an infection. So they swarm.

I think the most profoundly disgusting thing about people like Evans, Nichols and Lamothe is that they have no remorse of any kind as to the levels of personal destruction they wreak on others simply for having a different professional opinion on important matters of the day.

I desperately seek to understand why, and the only conclusion I can reach is that these three men possess a sort of inferiority complex that none will ever admit.

All three never served in uniform. That in and of itself is nothing to disparage—America is full of patriotic Americans who never wore a uniform but who serve our nation every day as upstanding, productive citizens and taxpayers.

However, Evans, Nichols and Lamothe all built careers being in and around brave men and women who DID serve. While they might imagine that they do, they simply do not understand what it means to take the oath of a U.S. military service member.

When they discovered that I was a member of the Senior Service College Task Force, they apparently leaped to the slanderous conclusion that what I am doing must be the job of a paid influencer and not simply a patriotic expression of a commissioned officer being loyal to his oath. That’s because it’s the only thing that made sense to them.

The idea of a sacred military oath is something that they simply cannot grasp because they have never taken it themselves. Yes, they have been in and around the military (in the case of Lamothe and Evans, downrange in our wars at times). Yet they never took the oath.

A husband can be in and around his pregnant wife, he can be in the OR when she delivers the baby, but the husband is a man and he will NEVER understand what it means to give birth.

Evans, Nichols and Lamothe will NEVER understand what it means to have your nation call, activate your oath, and you answer.

It is my opinion that such lack of understanding is a big part of why they do what they do, and why they believe what they do—it’s because they think I and my fellow task force members are acting in the manner and with the same grievous intent of status quo preservation that is fundamental to their blinkered existences.

Answering my nation’s call has cost me greatly. I have been through a living Hell for seven months. My health has deteriorated due to the constant harassment, lies and abuse. But I won’t back down. That would indicate surrender, and like all American Soldiers I will never surrender. There is too much work to be done.

To my foes? The truth will out.

Lastly, I hope everyone recognizes a sickness that lurks in our society.

In my journeys on X I have confronted literal Nazis. I have confronted literal jihadists. But it was only when I peacefully and professionally challenged the status quo in the professional military education of America’s officer corps that I received death threats and a massive effort to destroy my reputation and life.

There is a lesson there.

First published on X (see posts for more links in article)

“Dan, will you apologize for smearing us with the false accusation of being hired by the pentagon to spread their message? More importantly, were you looking at the government computer screen when the federal employee illegaly gave you my personnel file? Was there a green box at the top of the screen that had the letters CUI in it? Do you know Controlled Unclassified Information release requires a lawful government purpose? Will you name your source so they can be prosecuted for their crime against the United States?”

“Senior officers deserve the best possible education: effective, unbiased & laser-focused on our core warfighting mission. 🇺🇸

@SecWar directed a Senior Service College Task Force to conduct a comprehensive review of @DeptofWar SSCs. Its mandate: ensure these institutions are anchored in military history, strategy, high standards, meritocracy & overall excellence.

That review is now complete.

Special thanks to @RobManess, @KurtSchlichter & Tom Anderson for answering the call to serve on this Task Force. Led by Dr. Maurice L. Todd—ASW(R), PhD, MA, MS & top 5% West Point graduate—they delivered critical recommendations to strengthen our SSCs & prepare our military leaders to achieve peace through strength.”

“I would like to clarify some things.

On February 16, 2026, the magazine American Greatness published an article I wrote called “Making the War Colleges Great Again.” The article covered a number of recommendations on how to improve the warfighting focus of America’s military senior service colleges.

As a result of such article, I was invited by the Department of War to serve on a special task force studying those same senior service colleges.

I may be retired from active duty, but I am still a Soldier and my oath never expired. When my country called, I answered, and accepted an offer to be on the task force studying those same senior service colleges, an area for which I have certain expertise. I am a patriot and fully support the necessary efforts of the War Department with respect to reforming the senior service colleges, and I felt that answering this call was my duty and the fulfillment of my oath.

My service with the Department of War as a “Special Government Employee” was exclusively limited to participation in such task force and ended on July 26, 2026.

At no time have I ever received any compensation of any kind from any government source of any kind for anything I write or have ever written on X or in any magazine or other source. Those who claim otherwise defame me.

I proudly and unabashedly support the efforts of President Trump and the Department of War because it’s the right thing to do.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

“I would like to address some things that the Washington Post published about me on Aug 30, 2026.

On February 12, 2026, I published an article on X titled “It’s Time to Purge the Poison from All Professional Military Education” The article recommended the Department conduct a comprehensive audit of every course, syllabus, and faculty position at the Naval War College, Air War College, Army War College, and all other DoW senior service colleges and argued that any curriculum that prioritizes social engineering over warfighting should be eliminated. The piece also advocated for the immediate replacement of any faculty member—especially tenured civilians—who cannot demonstrate a primary commitment to producing lethal, mission-focused leaders.

As a result of the article, I was invited by the Department of War to serve on a special task force studying those same senior service colleges.

I am a retired commissioned officer and my oath never expires. When my nation called, I answered, and accepted an offer to be on the task force in a short-term appointment studying the senior service colleges. Like my colleagues, I am a patriot and fully support the necessary efforts of the War Department with respect to reforming the senior service colleges, and I felt that answering this call was my duty and the fulfillment of my oath. As a team, we determined we would set aside our media personas and conduct our task force duties as the professional commissioned officers and senior commanders we are. We successfully did that, and our report is in the hands of the Secretary. I will not comment on the findings until he and his team release it.

My service with the Department of War is exclusively limited to participation in the SSC task force.

At no time have I ever received any compensation of any kind from any government source of any kind for anything I write or have ever written on X or in any magazine or other source. The same is true for my media appearances in broadcast, cable, and digital media outlets. There are disclaimers on my websites and have been for over a decade since I am a retired officer. Those who claim otherwise defame me.

The Washington Post article published about me attempts to establish a context with its subtitle that is completely fabricated, categorically false, and defames me. The article also publishes illegally obtained personally identifiable information from government data sources about me.

I patriotically and unashamedly support the efforts of President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and the Department of War to ensure we are producing senior officers who can win our nation’s wars because it’s the most impactful thing to do for America’s future.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

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