Washington Post investigation reveals Pentagon secretly placed conservative social-media influencers into paid civilian defense roles

On August 30, 2026, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon had secretly placed at least three retired military officers with large social-media followings — Rob Maness (a retired Air Force colonel with more than 130,000 X followers), Kurt Schlichter (a retired Army colonel with more than 620,000 followers), and Thomas Anderson (a retired Army colonel who posts as "Cynical Publius" to more than 320,000 followers) — into paid civilian ".civ" Defense Department positions in the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata. The Post reviewed Pentagon records showing the three held active government email addresses and were classified as "highly qualified experts" or special government employees, a status capped at 130 days of work per year.

While holding the government roles, the three continued posting content amplifying Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's culture-war messaging on the platforms that had built their public followings. Anderson's assignment to Tata's office had previously been documented in Pentagon records but was removed from those records after being reported on, according to the Post's review. Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez declined to comment on the officers' salaries, duties, or length of service, and Tata, Maness, Schlichter, and Anderson all declined to comment for the story.

Embedding paid, credentialed government employees whose public role is amplifying a cabinet official's political messaging — while withholding basic facts about the arrangement from the public — is the kind of quiet blurring between an institution's official channels and a political operation that oversight mechanisms exist to catch. The arrangement surfaced only through investigative reporting, not through any Pentagon disclosure.