“New Pentagon chief racing to make changes before Trump’s exit.”

Mark Jacobson, assistant dean of the Washington programs for the Maxwell School, was quoted in the Politico story “New Pentagon chief racing to make changes before Trump’s exit.” Jacobson, an expert in foreign policy and national security, says that the recent shifts in command at the Pentagon merely reflect a strengthening between the Special Operations Command and the defense secretary. “Conspiratorial minded persons may think this change is about chain-of-command and putting the SecDef in direct control of [Special Operations Command] but that’s wrong — this move changes nothing operationally,” says Jacobson.