The Secretary's SitRep

There are few cities that celebrate sports quite like Philadelphia. What makes Philly different isn’t our celebrations per se—we have to grease the light poles—it’s the emotion of all of us coming together to support our teams, especially after they’ve struggled. As Eagles great Jason Kelce said to one million fans in the cold after finally winning it all: “Hungry dogs run faster.” Philadelphia loves its basketball legends.

For half a century, Russia has treated energy not merely as a commodity but as an instrument of state power. Oil financed its military, and gas pipelines gave Moscow leverage over Europe. Foreign governments could criticize and sanction Russia, but sooner or later, many of them still had to buy what Russia was selling. Now Ukraine is turning that arrangement inside out.

These days, you can hardly go a day without someone talking about artificial intelligence. What few people outside the tech world realize is that the AI revolution is also one of the largest construction projects in human history. Across the country, the physical infrastructure of the next economy is being built, including the factories that make advanced chips, the data centers that power AI, and the electrical systems needed to keep all of it running.

Happy 250th, America! I hope amidst your celebrations you took a moment to appreciate what an extraordinary country we live in. Two hundred and fifty years sounds like a long time until you remember the universe is nearly 14 billion years old. And yet, in that astonishingly short span, the United States has become one of the most influential experiments in self-government the world has ever seen.

For much of American history, patriotism has functioned as a kind of common language. We’ve fought bitterly over politics and culture, but have generally agreed that the country itself was worth believing in. That is, until recently. According to Gallup only 58% of U.S. adults say they are proud to be American—the lowest level since Gallup began measuring the question. Among Gen Z, the number is just 41%. People have good reason to be disillusioned.

When I returned from Iraq in 2004, I lived in New Hope, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from the stretch of the Delaware River where George Washington famously crossed on Christmas night in 1776. Every morning, I drove past the spot where Washington loaded 2,400 freezing soldiers into small boats and led them across an ice-choked river toward a surprise attack on Hessian forces in Trenton. For a long time, I thought of it as a historical landmark.

My father never said much about what made a man. He didn’t have to. Jack Murphy grew up in a trailer park in National Park, New Jersey, the son of a World War II Navy veteran who came home from the Pacific and, like many men of his generation, got on with life. My Pop-Pop drove a tractor trailer for Teamsters Local 107 and somehow still found time to serve as commander of the local VFW post. In our family, that wasn’t considered remarkable. It was simply what grown men did.

During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt called the United States the “Arsenal of Democracy.” He wasn’t reaching for poetry. He was describing the industrial capacity that made Allied victory possible. Today that lesson is overdue for a revival. As the United States confronts renewed geopolitical competition and growing economic uncertainty, national security begins with industrial strength. A nation cannot build ships and tanks without the capacity to make steel.

When FDR called America “the great arsenal of democracy“ in 1940 he wasn’t waxing poetic about the greatness of America compared to the Axis powers. He was talking about our industrial capacity to outproduce our adversaries. During World War II, Japan produced some of the most capable fighter aircraft in the world. The Mitsubishi Zero was faster and more maneuverable than many of its American counterparts during the early stages of the war.

If you spend enough time reading the news these days, it’s easy to conclude that America is coming apart. Trust in government is near historic lows and trust in the media isn’t much better. Religious participation has declined, and Americans feel increasingly disconnected from their communities. But a few weeks ago, standing on stage at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), I found a reason to feel hopeful about the future.