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By Max Frost
Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Hegseth put out a statement announcing “the disestablishment of the Office of Net Assessment.” Based on the name, you could be forgiven for assuming Hegseth was shuttering some type of dry, bureaucratic accounting office.
But you’d be mistaken: The Office of Net Assessment (ONA) has been labeled “the office that won the Cold War.” For decades, it was overseen by a man known as the Pentagon’s Yoda. Multiple defense secretaries have called it a pillar of American security.
For 62 years, the ONA held this reputation. Soon, it’ll be a remnant of the past. How did it fall so far?
In 1973, amid the Cold War’s strategic uncertainties, President Richard Nixon signed off on a new Pentagon initiative: The Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Tasked with providing long-term military forecasts and comparative assessments of US and adversary capabilities, the office would report directly to the Secretary of Defense. At its helm was Andrew W. Marshall, a soft-spoken strategist whose vision would shape American military thinking for decades.
Marshall – whose wisdom and mystique earned him the nickname the “Pentagon’s Yoda” – built ONA into an intellectual powerhouse, drawing on deep analysis to anticipate emerging threats. Unlike the intelligence community, which focused on immediate concerns, ONA played the long game: Studying geopolitical shifts, technological revolutions, and potential military competitions that could unfold decades into the future.
During the late Cold War, ONA’s work helped shape US military strategy against the Soviet Union. Marshall championed the idea of “competitive strategies,” encouraging the US to exploit Soviet weaknesses rather than match them tank-for-tank. This approach influenced the Reagan Administration’s military buildup, particularly its focus on high-tech solutions like stealth aircraft and precision-guided munitions. ONA’s studies of Soviet economic strain and technological limitations proved more accurate than other intelligence agencies and guided the US strategies that contributed to the USSR’s collapse.
Yet ONA’s relevance didn’t stop with the end of the Cold War.
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Editor’s Note
Shutting ONA: Good call or bad call? Let us know by replying to this email. We’ll keep today’s outro short, so that’s all we’ve got. In case you missed our latest stories, you can find them below.
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