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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spiked the names of at least six Army officers from a list for promotions to two-star generals, a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Hill Tuesday. 

The removals come just days after the Pentagon chief blocked promotions of four Army officers selected to ascend to one-star rank, some of whom had links to former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — who Hegseth ousted in early April — and Gen. Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa who retired earlier this summer.

Hegseth’s office did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. 

Earlier this year, the defense secretary similarly pulled four Army officers, two women and two Black men, from a one-star general promotion list — to the displeasure of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and other top officials.

Driscoll handed his resignation to the White House on Monday and is set to depart the Trump administration after a months-long turf war with Hegseth, a move that further signals the defense secretary’s aim to impose his will on the service branch.

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Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is set to depart his role at the Pentagon in the coming days, leaving the Trump administration after being embroiled in a months-long turf war with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to two sources familiar with internal deliberations. 

Driscoll spoke with President Trump about the “current state” of the Army and submitted his resignation, one source told The Hill on Monday.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is set to depart his role at the Pentagon in the coming days, leaving the Trump administration after being embroiled in a months-long turf war with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations, restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and more,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to The Hill on Monday. 

“The United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War,” Kelly added.

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Imagine this: Two countries are at war. Country X sends a drone into a major industrial city in Country Y, aiming to take out two propane tanks. A routine sequence. But this time, the drone never reaches its targets. Instead, Country X’s drone accidentally strikes a wall nearby, explodes, and kills three young civilians.

When Country Y eventually retrieves the drone’s remnants for intel, it finds an AI supercomputer inside that reveals something unsettling. Instead of a human deciding what to strike — the AI did.

The truth is, you don’t have to imagine this scene — it just happened. For the first time in the Russia-Ukraine war, as reported recently in the New York Times, three Ukrainian civilians were killed by a Russian drone, developed, designed and released by humans, that, in the end, selected its target autonomously. And this new reality is shaping up to be the future of warfare.

That’s because a number of countries, including those with the world’s most consequential militaries, are rejecting the idea that human beings need always be in control of weapons in war.

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A federal judge has ruled in favor of artificial intelligence company Anthropic in its legal battle against the Pentagon after the government labeled the company as a supply chain risk earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a written order Thursday night that the Pentagon acted illegally by punishing the AI company for its criticism of the Department of Defense's views on AI use. The government is expected to fight the ruling.

The dispute between the AI company and the government broke out in February when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company's products could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.

Lin wrote that the government's actions "were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its 'arrogance' in criticizing the government, not based on any articulable basis to believe that Anthropic would actually sabotage its model."

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Tennessee national guard members assigned to a federal anti-crime taskforce in Memphis fatally shot an armed 20-year-old man in the back, according to an autopsy report obtained by the Associated Press, contradicting police accounts that said the man was facing the troops when they fired.

Authorities have said that Tyrin Johnson turned toward guard members with a gun while running from them in the early morning hours after the Fourth of July holiday in Memphis when he was fatally shot in the chest.

But according to an autopsy report shared by Johnson’s family, a single bullet went in the right side of his back and exited through his upper right chest. The autopsy findings, reported earlier by the Commercial Appeal, the Memphis news outlet, were prepared by the West Tennessee regional forensic center office of the medical examiner, which did not respond to a request for comment.

The guard members were assigned to the Memphis Safe Task Force, created by Donald Trump, as the US president last year sent troops and federal agents to Democratic-run cities that he described as overrun with crime. The taskforce was involved in four fatal shootings between May and July.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked promotions of four Army officers picked for promotion to one-star rank, some of whom have ties to top Army generals the Pentagon chief ousted earlier this year, The Hill has learned.

Some of the officers pulled from the list have links to former Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Randy George, who Hegseth removed in April, and to Gen. Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa who was ousted by the defense secretary in June, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, told The Hill on Friday.

“Military promotions are given to those who have earned them. This has always been the case under Secretary Hegseth and will not change.” Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told The Hill in a statement on Friday.

Earlier this year, Hegseth intervened and removed four Army officers — two women and two Black men — from a one-star general promotion list to the dismay of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and other service branch officials, The Hill and other news outlets have reported.

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