David Maxwell
On 30 September 2025, along with the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, President Trump addressed an unprecedented assembly of senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico and framed part of the national threat as an “enemy within.” Trump advocated that the military use U.S. cities as a “training ground.” While this could be interpreted as hyperbole, reporting and transcript excerpts make clear that the speech urged a closer marriage of domestic security and military resources. This message, when issued from the White House podium, lowers political and bureaucratic barriers that previously separated homeland governance from combat operations.
Almost concurrently, the Department of War’s Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) launched a course titled Irregular Warfare Approaches for the Homeland, designed to teach counter-threat-network, counter-threat-finance, and other irregular-warfare practices oriented toward the domestic context. The IWC describes the course as a practical, self-paced curriculum intended to help homeland security professionals and military personnel understand and counter hybrid threats on U.S. soil. The combination of presidential rhetoric and institutional education is consequential: public political signaling can alter norms and expectations, while institutional training converts rhetoric into doctrine and habit.
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