Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the US military must fix “decades of decay” as he addressed a rare gathering of hundreds of senior officers summoned from around the world to hear him speak near Washington.

The wide-ranging 45-minute speech comes as the military has faced controversy both at home and abroad, with President Donald Trump deploying troops in two Democratic-run US cities and ordering lethal strikes on small, alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

Trump, who has overseen a rare purge of senior officers after taking office, has also ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and Tehran-backed Yemeni rebels.

“This speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden,” Hegseth said, as he strode a stage in front of a massive American flag.

“Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading, and we lost our way. We became the ‘Woke Department’. But not anymore,” he said.

Hegseth declared an end to “ideological garbage,” citing concerns over climate change, bullying, “toxic” leaders and promotions based on race or gender as examples.

He also took aim at the Pentagon’s inspector general— which is investigating his conduct— saying the office “has been weaponised, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat.”

Trump was due to address the gathering of top officers later in the morning.

Shakeups at Pentagon

Amid speculation over reasons for gathering all the top brass in one place, Vice President JD Vance insisted it was “actually not unusual at all,” and told reporters “it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story.”

The Pentagon only said last week that Hegseth “will be addressing his senior military leaders,” and the lack of clarity over what would occur fed speculation that a major announcement.

In May, Hegseth ordered major cuts to the number of general and flag officers in the US military, including at least a 20 percent reduction in the number of active-duty four-star generals and admirals.

That came after the Pentagon announced in February that it aimed to reduce the number of its civilian employees by at least five percent.

Since beginning his second term in January, Trump has also purged top officers, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff general Charles “CQ” Brown, whom he fired without explanation in February.

Other senior officers dismissed this year include the heads of the Navy and Coast Guard, the leaders of the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, a Navy admiral assigned to Nato, and three top military lawyers.

Hegseth defended the firings on Tuesday, saying: “It’s nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create—or even benefited from—that culture.”

US forces carried out a nearly two-month-long campaign of strikes targeting Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels earlier this year and also hit three nuclear sites that were a key part of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

And US troops have also been deployed in Los Angeles and Washington— allegedly to combat civil unrest and crime—while similar moves are planned for Portland, Memphis and potentially other cities.

• All flights cancelled at Kabul airport on Tuesday.
• Online businesses and banking systems frozen.
• UN operations fall back to radio communications.

KABUL: The United Nations called on Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities Monday to immediately restore internet and telecommunications in the country, 24 hours after a nationwide blackout was imposed.

The government began shutting down high-speed internet connections to some provinces earlier this month to prevent “vice”, on the orders of its leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.

Mobile phone signal and internet service were weakened on Monday night until connectivity was less than 1% of ordinary levels.

Afghans are unable to contact each other, online businesses and the banking systems have frozen, and the diaspora abroad cannot send crucial remittances to their families.

All flights were cancelled at Kabul airport on Tuesday, AFP journalists saw.

“The cut in access has left Afghanistan almost completely cut off from the outside world, and risks inflicting significant harm on the Afghan people, including by threatening economic stability and exacerbating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises,” the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.

“The current blackout also constitutes a further restriction on access to information and freedom of expression in Afghanistan,” it added.

It is the first time since the Taliban government won its insurgency in 2021 that communications have been shut down in the country.

“We are blind without phones and the internet,” said 42-year-old shopkeeper Najibullah in Kabul.

“All our business relies on mobiles. The deliveries are with mobiles. It’s like a holiday, everyone is at home. The market is totally frozen.”

The telecommunications ministry refused to let journalists enter the building in Kabul on Tuesday.

Minutes before the shutdown on Monday evening, a government official warned AFP that the fibre optic network would be cut, and affect mobile phone services.

“Eight to nine thousand telecommunications pillars” would be shut down, he said, adding that the blackout would last “until further notice”.

“There isn’t any other way or system to communicate […] the banking sector, customs, everything across the country will be affected,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

Radio communications

Diplomatic sources told AFP on Tuesday that mobile networks were mostly shut down.

A UN source, meanwhile, said “operations are severely impacted, falling back to radio communications and limited satellite links”.

Telephone services are often routed over the internet, sharing the same fibre optic lines, especially in countries with limited telecoms infrastructure.

Over the past weeks, internet connections have been extremely slow or intermittent.

On September 16, Balkh provincial spokesman Attaullah Zaid said the ban had come from the Taliban leader’s orders.

“This measure was taken to prevent vice, and alternative options will be put in place across the country to meet connectivity needs,” he wrote on social media.

At the time, AFP correspondents reported the same restrictions in the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, as well as in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, and Uruzgan in the south.

The Taliban leader reportedly ignored warnings from some officials this month about the economic fallout of cutting the internet and ordered authorities to press ahead with a nationwide ban.

Netblocks, a watchdog organisation that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said the blackout “appears consistent with the intentional disconnection of service”.

On Tuesday, it said connectivity had flatlined below 1%, with no restoration of service observed.

In 2024, Kabul had touted the 9,350-kilometre (5,800-mile) fibre optic network — largely built by former US-backed governments — as a “priority” to bring the country closer to the rest of the world and lift it out of poverty.

Britain plans to tighten the rules over how migrants can settle permanently by making applicants prove their value to society, including being able to speak a “high standard” of English, interior minister Shabana Mahmood said on Monday.

The plan is the latest government effort to dent the rising popularity of the populist Reform UK party, which has led the debate on tackling immigration and forced Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to toughen its policies.

Most migrants can currently apply for “indefinite leave to remain” after five years of living in Britain, a status that gives them the right to live permanently in the country.

In her first speech to the Labour Party conference as interior minister, Mahmood said the government is considering making changes so people will only qualify for this status if they pay social security contributions, have a clean criminal record, do not claim benefits, can speak English, and have a record of volunteering in their communities.

Right to settle must be earned

“Time spent in this country alone is not enough,” Mahmood said. “You must earn the right to live in this country.”

A consultation on the proposals will be launched later this year, she said, and this builds on the government’s earlier announcement that this standard qualifying period would be changed to a baseline of 10 years.

Mahmood said her plans mean some people who live in Britain for more than a decade could still be denied permission to permanently remain if they fail to meet new standards.

Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK, which is leading in opinion polls, said last week it was considering scrapping “indefinite leave to remain”, and replacing it with a five-year renewable work visa.

Starmer accused Reform on Sunday of planning a “racist policy” of mass deportations, although he clarified he did not think Reform supporters were racist.

Lawyers said the new requirements may discourage some people moving to Britain, and requiring people to volunteer would be hard to assess.

Mahmood told the conference she was willing to be unpopular to stop the arrival of tens of thousands of people on small boats from Europe.

“We will have to question some of the assumptions and legal constraints that have lasted for a generation and more,” she said. “Without control, we simply do not have the conditions in which our country can be open, tolerant and generous.”

Immigration has long been one of the most important issues for voters in Britain. Controlling the number of arrivals was a key factor in the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, yet net arrivals hit record levels after Britain left the bloc