the warrior

Pete Hegseth has proposed routine testosterone testing for U.S. soldiers. I am not making this up.

No other major military in the world does this. This is the kind of sentence that, when you read it, seems like it should continue. It does not continue. Armies in Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and various other nations have historically been satisfied knowing that their soldiers were, in fact, in the military. This was considered adequate. It is no longer adequate.

To understand what is being proposed: a person enlists. The person undergoes training. The person passes physical fitness tests. The person is sent to a combat zone with weapons. Then the government draws the person's blood.

(This is not to check for anything that would disqualify the person from combat. The person is already in combat. This is to check for something else.)

The something else is testosterone. Specifically, whether there is enough of it. The government wants to know this. The government has decided that the correct way to know this is to check.

Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense. He has said, on many occasions and across several television networks, that the U.S. military had grown insufficiently masculine, insufficiently warrior-like. He is now in charge of addressing this. His proposal is a blood test.

You might wonder what happens when a soldier fails. When the levels come back insufficient. The procedure that would follow has not been publicly described. You might also wonder what a soldier who passes the test is now entitled to do that a soldier who has not taken it cannot. These are also unanswered questions. The proposal was not designed to generate them.

The blood does not know it is in a soldier.

The solution, if there is one, is almost certainly not a solution. It is a second form that references a first form. The first form may no longer be the correct form. Warriors, apparently, need checking.