Hegseth's Staff Broke the Eisenhower Globe He Wanted

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted one of Dwight Eisenhower's old globes moved into his office. In February, his staff tried to do the move themselves, dropped the artifact, and punched a gash into its shell near Antarctica. The Washington Post reported the story on Thursday, eight months after it happened.

The Eisenhower globe was a thirty-inch artifact on a wooden base, built in the mid-1930s by a British company and kept at the Pentagon. Eisenhower had marked it up with green pen while planning the war in Europe. Photographs obtained by the Post show the spherical portion hanging off its metal mount, with a tear several inches wide in the shell.

Moving an artifact like that is normally a job for trained curators from the U.S. Army Center of Military History. The specialists were on furlough during a partial government shutdown tied to a congressional fight over immigration funding, according to the Post's account. Hegseth's aides went ahead anyway on February 3. One source described the decision as an "apparent lack of patience." The Eisenhower globe never reached the defense secretary's office.

How the Eisenhower globe got dropped

Army spokesperson Christopher Surridge confirmed the damage happened during what he called an "attempted move." The spherical portion of the globe, he said, separated from the metal mounting that lets it spin. NBC News checked the story with three U.S. officials, who said the Eisenhower globe was one of at least two the general kept, and that the wartime markings made it notable.

The Pentagon tried to shrink the story. A department spokesperson said staff had been moving "a replica of the Eisenhower globe," that accidents happen, that no one was hurt, and that the globe is being repaired. The same statement called the Post's reporting an "inconsequential non-story." The replica claim fell apart quickly: NBC News verified with its officials that the damaged object was the original, and the Post published photos of the gash next to a plaque identifying it as one of two nearly identical historic Eisenhower globes in the Pentagon's possession.

The object is cataloged by the Army's military history center. It is a record of the Second World War, not decor. It survived the planning of the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted and cracked open during a staff errand that skipped the single precaution built for exactly this risk.

Why he wanted the Eisenhower globe

Hegseth's taste for military history is on record. He had already moved two other artifacts into his office before asking for the Eisenhower globe, according to coverage of the episode. Historians read the request as an attempt to borrow the standing of a different era of American leadership. Retired brigadier general Ty Seidule told the Post that Hegseth seemed to want an Eisenhower totem to absorb something of Ike's reputation in war and peace, and that no globe could hand him the humility, intellect, and judgment that actually defined Eisenhower, in remarks quoted across the coverage.

The style fits a pattern. Hegseth has pushed to rename the Defense Department the Department of War, a change Congress has not approved. He promotes a "warrior ethos" through televised workouts with troops and ordered mandatory testosterone screening for male service members over thirty. The Eisenhower globe episode gives that branding a concrete image: forceful aesthetics applied to a fragile object, with the result anyone could have predicted.

There is a generational edge to the story as well. The people coming of age now will inherit the institutions being run this way. When historians are furloughed by a shutdown and their work gets handed to whoever happens to be in the office that day, the loss goes past one cracked artifact. It teaches everyone watching that irreplaceable things are props until someone with a title decides otherwise.

The Pentagon says the Eisenhower globe is being repaired, and that is probably true. It is also the least interesting fact in the story. More interesting: a defense secretary asked for a piece of history as decoration, his staff skipped the curators, and a thirty-inch sphere of the world came back with a hole where Antarctica used to be.

Related reading: according to our earlier reporting on the border heat ray debate, the Flock camera network turned dragnet, and Barclays' AI job cuts.

Sources: NPR on the globe's historic significance and a summary of The Washington Post's Thursday report.