Pentagon pulls all military speakers from ‘globalist’ Aspen Security Forum

The Pentagon has pulled roughly a dozen high-ranking U.S. military officials who had been slated to participate in this week’s annual Aspen Security Forum, Just the News has learned.

The Defense Department cited the left-wing nature of the Aspen Institute and the participation of such critics of President Trump as Biden administration National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

The annual forum put on by the Aspen Institute – which has been dubbed “the mountain retreat for the liberal elite” – describes the event as “the premier national security and foreign policy conference in the United States.”

Roughly a dozen top Defense Department officials – including the secretary of the Navy and the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command – are still listed as speakers on the Aspen Security Forum agenda this week, but a source told Just the News over the weekend that that will no longer happen.

“The Department of Defense has no interest in legitimizing an organization that has invited former officials who have been the architects of chaos abroad and failure at home,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Just the News.

"They are antithetical to the America First values of this administration. Senior representatives of the Department of Defense will no longer be participating in an event that promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the President of the United States," Wilson also said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit this weekend that his agency under Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden was "distracted by experiments" in left-wing ideology and that "from day one, we have declared that [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives are] dead at DoD," calling it a "back-to-basics moment."

The Institute receives funding from left-leaning donors, stacks its commissions with anti-Trump activists, and has been linked to a series of events which Republicans say contributed to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop stories in October 2020, critics say.

The Capital Research Center, a right-leaning think tank, stated that in 2022, the group spent $95,042,121 on public policy programs "addressing issues including economic distress, educational opportunity, environmentalism, and the left-wing concept of racial justice,” according to the center’s Influence Watch project.

The annual security forum is organized by the Aspen Strategy Group, which is part of the larger institute. The group is co-chaired by former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as part of the Republican Bush administration, and Biden’s former ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns.

The forum’s agenda shows that the capstone event at the end of the week will feature a panel discussion among Rice, Sullivan former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Sullivan was the country's national security adviser during the U.S. military's final withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which 13 American service members were killed, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Sullivan claimed in late September 2023 that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades” as he specifically pointed to Yemen and Iran. The Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel happened just over a week later, resulting in an ongoing war between the sides. 

Sullivan was also Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, where he pushed the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, including debunked allegations about the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.

On Halloween 2016, Clinton tweeted: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” And she shared a lengthy Sullivan statement.

“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan claimed. “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. … This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin.”

Sullivan added: “We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia.”

Gates, when asked by CBS News in 2022 if he believed Trump running for office again would present that threat to national security, replied that “it would concern me.”

“Senior Department of Defense officials will no longer be participating at the Aspen Security Forum because their values do not align with the values of the DoD,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement on Monday morning. “The Department will remain strong in its focus to increase the lethality of our warfighters, revitalize the warrior ethos, and project Peace Through Strength on the world stage. It is clear the ASF is not in alignment with these goals.”

The Aspen Institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Just the News.

Top DoD officials skip the forum

A number of high-ranking Defense Department leaders will no longer appear at the Aspen Security Forum, including John Phelan, the Secretary of the Navy; Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; General Bryan Fenton, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command; General Stephen Whiting, the commander of U.S. Space Command; and General Randall Reed, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command.

Other key Defense Department leaders who had been slated to speak but who will no longer appear include Lieutenant General Jeff Kruse, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Vice Admiral Frank “Trey” Whitworth, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; David Cattler, the director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency; Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering; Doug Beck, the director of the Defense Innovation Unit at the department; and Lieutenant General John W. Brennan Jr., the deputy commander of U.S. Africa Command.

The forum’s agenda shows Defense Department officials had been scheduled to hold numerous discussions onstage at the forum, including ones moderated by journalists such as Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold of NBC News, Kaitlan Collins and Jim Sciutto of CNN, Margaret Brennan of CBS News, Nick Schifrin of PBS News Hour, and Shashank Joshi of The Economist.

A number of other Trump administration officials outside the Defense Department are also listed as expected speakers at the forum, such as Adam Boehler, the special envoy for hostage response at the State Department; Thomas Barrack, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and U.S. special envoy to Syria; Paras Malik, counselor to the secretary and chief AI officer at the Treasury Department; and Matthew Noyes, the cyber policy and strategy director at U.S. Secret Service.

Biden officials slated to get spotlight at the forum

A number of top Biden administration officials will be in the spotlight at this year's forum.

Ambassador Julianne Smith, a close ally of Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, is listed as a speaker. She was the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO during the Biden administration, and also served as a senior adviser to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Smith had also been the acting national security adviser for then-Vice President Biden.

Smith is currently serving as the president of the newly-formed Clarion Strategies, which she recently co-founded with Austin. The group states that “our mission is to empower our clients with the knowledge, foresight, and networks needed to anticipate risks, seize opportunities, and drive resilient decision-making at a time of tremendous global uncertainty.​”

“Austin led the Pentagon through unprecedented modernization and maturation, preparing the department for global competition in Asia and addressing the rise and ubiquity of autonomous and AI-enabled weapons systems,” Austin’s Clarion Strategies biography reads. “He also created pathways to drive private capital to national security priorities.” 

Austin’s role with Clarion Strategies earned him a bipartisan rebuke earlier this month. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., wrote Austin a letter obtained by Politico about him launching the new strategic advisory firm, stating that “such actions raise concerns that, less than six months after leaving your role as Secretary of Defense in the Biden Administration, you have taken a trip through the revolving door and begun cashing in on your public service.”

Wally Adeyemo, the deputy secretary of the Treasury Department under Biden, who had previously served as the president of the Barack Obama Foundation, is also speaking at the forum.

Other speakers at the forum include prominent Trump critic senators such as Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., fired former Trump Defense Secretary and harsh Trump critic Mark Esper, former Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, and former State Department official Brett McGurk, who resigned from the Trump administration then joined the Biden administration.

Speakers such as Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, former George W. Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley, and General David Petraeus are also scheduled to speak at the forum.

Other journalists slated to speak or moderate at the forum include Peter Baker and David Sanger of the New York Times, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, and Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

Aspen Institute affiliate warns of “praetorian state” under Trump and Hegseth

An international affiliate of the Aspen Institute has harshly criticized Trump and Hegseth.

A lengthy article published by Aspenia Online — entitled “Trump’s United States: between the politicization of the armed forces and the crisis of democracy” — repeatedly attacked decisions made by Hegseth and repeatedly claimed that Trump and the Hegseth-led Pentagon were politicizing the U.S. military, even suggesting that the U.S. might be becoming a “praetorian state … in which the armed forces … hold such a prominent role that they become the center of power.”

Aspenia Online is a project of the Aspen Institute Italia — which is among the “international affiliates” of the Aspen Institute.

“In the transition towards a praetorian state, the loss of political legitimacy by those in power is central. This may lead to two scenarios. On the one hand, the military intervenes to restore order, presenting itself as the defender of national unity, which results in a military coup. On the other, those in power increasingly rely on the armed forces to assert and/or maintain their authority, making the leader ever more dependent on military power,” the Aspenia Online article claimed. “A people who, in the name of polarization that casts the opponent as un-American, identify with their leader and, in this sense, legitimize the use of military force. This could lead to a growing dependence of the rulers on the armed forces, which, as has been seen, already enjoy a certain preeminence in the United States, and the combination of these trends and pressures risks, if not leading to a praetorian state, at least worsening the crisis of American democracy, especially if voices of dissent begin to rise from within the military against the commander in chief.”

The Aspen Institute’s leftwing and anti-Trump bent

The Aspen Security Forum was labeled “the mountain retreat for the liberal elite” in a September 2019 article by The Economist, with the piece stating, “The Aspen Institute has trained hundreds of the world’s business and political leaders. Linda Kinstler asks whether debating Plato over gourmet dinners can provide an antidote to populism.”

Katie Couric, the former celebrity TV anchor and a co-chair of Aspen Institute's Commission on Information Disorder, has repeatedly called Trump a "fascist." She seemingly compared the October 2020 Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden last year to a "Nazi event.” Couric also shared a YouTube post last year entitled, “Why Donald Trump Is Really A Fascist.” Couric has continued sharing the idea that Trump is a fascist repeatedly this year too.

Aspen Institute president Dan Porterfield previously claimed that Trump "fomented" the "deadly insurrection" at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a since-deleted tweet, as reported by the Free Beacon. Porterfield previously spent four years as communications director and chief speechwriter for the Clinton HHS Secretary Donna Shalala in the 1990s.

An Aspen Institute blog post in February 2022 claimed that “Christian nationalism is particularly dangerous because it is tolerated. Capitol rioters were not confronted by law enforcement with the same force as protesters of color would have been, and rioters who were arrested have faced minimal criminal consequences.”

The list of “top recipients” of political donations in 2024 from those associated with the Aspen Institute had then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the very top, according to Open Secrets, and among the list of ten “top recipients" all were Democrats and none were Republicans. In the 2022 cycle, all ten “top recipients” were again Democrats. Number one on the list of “top recipients” in 2020 was then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and again all of the ten were Democrats. In the 2018 cycle, yet again all ten “top recipients” were Democrats. Number one on the list of “top recipients” in 2016 was then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and once more all of the ten were Democrats.

The institute previously hosted leftwing racial activist Ibram X. Kendi for a 2019 interview entitled, “What Is Antiracism and Can It Save Society?” The institute reposted the interview in June 2020, writing, “A leading voice on antiracism, Ibram X. Kendi says countering racism is essential to the formation of a just and equitable society — so, how can we fight it?”

The institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival hosted the co-founder of the national Black Lives Matter organization, Alicia Garza, in July 2020. The institute also wrote about “Confronting Systemic Racism in America” in August 2020.

The Aspen Institute website’s “Racial Equity” webpage now redirects to a “Justice” webpage, which appears to have begun sometime between April and June, according to the WayBackMachine.

Influence Watch said that the Aspen Institute “has received $7,620,337 from the left-of-center John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation between 1981 and 2023” and that “according to a list of its 2023 contributors, the Aspen Institute received donations of at least $1 million from 38 groups that included the Walmart Foundation, Google LLC, the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.”

The institute has been awarded more than $85 million in federal funds, including both grants and contracts, over the past decade, according to Open Secrets, with the group being promised $53.4 million from State Department, $18.53 million from USAID, $9.43 million from HHS, and $3 million from the EPA since 2015.

More than half of that federal money was awarded or sent to the Aspen Institute during Joe Biden’s presidency, with more than $44.51 million being allocated to them the past four years, according to Open Secrets, including $22.59 million from the State Department, $9.84 million from USAID, $9.08 million from HHS, and $3 million from the EPA.

The Commission on Information Disorder

The Aspen Institute’s “Commission on Information Disorder” was stacked with anti-Trump leadership and seemed to take aim at conservatives.

The Aspen Institute announced in March 2021 the launch of its “Commission on Information Disorder.”

“Amid rising challenges to truth, journalism, and democracy, the Aspen Institute will host an intensive, six-month commission bringing together experts and vital perspectives from government, media, civil society, and the private sector to deliver recommendations for how the country can respond to this modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions,” the institute declared. “Developed and hosted by the Aspen Digital program, the ‘Commission on Information Disorder’ will be co-chaired by three leading public figures, each with unique perspectives on society’s urgent mis- and disinformation challenge.”

These three co-chairs were Chris Krebs, a Trump critic and former director of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; “renowned journalist” Katie Couric; and  “racial equity leader Rashad Robinson, the president of Color Of Change.”

The 15 commissioners on the project included a range of figures, from former principal deputy director of national intelligence Sue Gordon to “Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.”

Vivian Schiller, the executive director of Aspen Digital, helped host the 21 episodes of Aspen Digital’s “Disinfo Discussions” podcast. One episode was entitled “Conservative Media and Disinformation” and featured Dispatch co-founder Steve Hayes, who joined the host in critiquing right-leaning media outlets. There is no similar such episode scrutinizing leftwing media disinformation.

Schiller said that “these discussions are intended to inform the members of our Commission on Information Disorder, of course, as well as the general public.”

“Today we’re going to be talking about right-wing media, which of course is not a monolith … But understanding the range of information presented from, say, the very much fact-based Dispatch, which Steve is a part of, to what I would call the fantasy based OANN, for example, is critical for understanding public opinion,” Schiller declared.

Schiller also claimed: “This past week, this is similar to every week, the top ten performing link posts on Facebook, all but two of them were from conservative media or conservative talk radio commentators, many of whom have been advancing false narratives about the election, about vaccines. Ben Shapiro, I mean, you know the list. … What do we do about that, particularly when those posts are fraught with falsehoods?”

Hayes agreed that “it’s a huge problem.”

“This is a little bit of a grim picture I have to say in terms of the current state of and future of reality based and fact based — I mean we’re not here to talk about media on the left, I’m gonna leave that alone — but fact based consecration media,” Schiller also said. “I mean there are only a very few handful that I’m aware of.”

The Commission on Information Disorder released its final report in November 2021.

“Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems,” the report said. “Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.”

Aspen Institute’s Hunter Biden laptop censorship link

Yoel Roth, a former Twitter executive linked to the Hunter Biden laptop saga, was among the technical advisors and briefers for the Aspen Institute’s disinformation commission.

The commission said that “the commissioners had a chance to hear from and ask questions of experts across a range of fields to contribute to their understanding and thinking” — including being briefed by Roth. The commission also said of technical advisers such as Roth that “their primary role was to be on-hand to provide commissioners with enhanced understanding of the issues it considered, and to provide advice as requested on potential solutions it might recommend.”

Yoel Roth said in a December 2020 declaration to the Federal Election Commission that he was head of site integrity at Twitter, which is part of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Department.

“Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security,” Roth said. “During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.”

Roth added: “I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter. These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”

He said his team “determined that the information in the articles could have been obtained through hacking” and that his team “escalated” the articles for further review. Roth said Twitter’s Trust and Safety leadership then determined the articles “violated the Distribution of Hacked Materials Policy,” and the leadership group “instructed the Site Integrity Team to execute enforcement.”

Roth said his team then blocked Twitter users from sharing links to the New York Post articles. He said he did not discuss it with any Biden campaign representatives prior to censoring the articles.

Roth also testified in February 2023 that “Twitter and other tech companies worked to build closer information-sharing relationships with law enforcement such as the FBI” in the lead up to the 2020 election to deal with “threats” posed by Russian disinformation efforts similar to those in 2016.

An October 2020 complaint from the RNC alleged that “through its ad hoc, partisan oppression of media critical of Biden, [Twitter] is making illegal, corporate in-kind contributions as it provides unheard-of media services for Joe Biden’s campaign.” The FEC rejected the complaint in August 2021.

Craig Newmark, who funded the Aspen Institute commission’s work in 2021, “has sponsored research that pushed disinformation about Biden's laptop,” according to the Free Beacon. Newmark funded a 2021 study from New York University which dismissed the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories as “a case of reasonable decisions wrapped in mystifying processes.” The study also attempted to argue that social media platforms are not biased against conservatives.

The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Subcommittee also released an October 2024 report condemning the FBI’s handling of Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election. The GOP-led committee directly linked the Aspen Institute to this effort, stating that Aspen Digital was among the “non-governmental third parties, though likely not privy to key information such as the fact that the FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop, also were part of the prebunking campaign.”

“Beginning in early 2020, the FBI embarked on a concerted campaign to preemptively debunk – or ‘prebunk’ – allegations about the Biden family’s influence peddling,” the GOP report said. “Federal agencies repeatedly warned social media platforms about a pre-election Russian influence operation relating to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian company Burisma,” the GOP said. “In many of these meetings between federal agencies and Big Tech, the FBI raised the topic of potential ‘hack-and-leak’ operations amid conversations about ‘election security’ and potential foreign influence operations.”

The Republican report also states: “Then, when the New York Post reported on Biden family influence peddling the morning of October 14, 2020, Big Tech did exactly what it had been primed to do. The social media companies obediently treated the article as a potential Russian hack-and-leak operation and applied their content moderation policies to censor it, prevent it from spreading, and hide it from the American people.”

The committee cited the Aspen Digital Hack and Leak Roundtable agenda for its “Hack and Leak Roundtable” on June 25, 2020, which included “journalists, ethicists, First Amendment attorneys, and platform executives” for a discussion about “standards and ethics when it comes to publication and coverage in hack and leak scenarios.” The committee said “the roundtable participants discussed how traditional news media and Big Tech platforms would handle materials that they obtained as a result of an alleged hack and leak, how to assess the motivation for hack and leaks, the role government actors could play in confirming whether the materials were authentic or had been manipulated in some way, and whether it was appropriate to apply information labels to related content.”

“A few months later, in September 2020, Aspen Digital hosted a tabletop exercise about a hack-and-leak scenario,” the committee report said. “In a tabletop exercise, participants simulate their responses to a hypothetical set of facts, reacting to the responses of other participants and new information revealed incrementally throughout the exercise. Unlike the roundtable, which broadly discussed how companies handle materials related to a hack and leak, this exercise revolved around a specific hypothetical scenario involving a leak of Burisma documents tied to Hunter Biden.”

The GOP-led committee added: “This exercise gave social media companies the opportunity to stress test the hack-and-leak responses they had proposed—and in some cases finalized—after the FBI’s warnings to expect one in September or October 2020. Even more, the scenario set forth by Aspen Digital closely mirrored the warnings given by the FBI and the details of the actual news story published by the New York Post just one month later.”

Garrett Graff, the director of cyber initiatives at the Aspen Digital, also penned a late October 2020 article published by Wired shared by the Aspen Institute where he baselessly hinted that the Hunter Biden laptop saga was a Russian effort, writing that “this week’s New York Post series on Hunter Biden sets off nearly every warning alarm about a possible hack-and-dump-style information operation, akin to the Russian thefts of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.”