Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran, has repeatedly elevated military recruiting successes into the marquee achievement of his tenure and folded recruiting, long treated as an apolitical function of the military, into a broader culture-war proxy. … The military’s recruiting rebound is real, but the reasons behind it are far less political than Hegseth’s framing suggests. ABC News interviewed nearly 40 recruits and prospective recruits at different stages of enlistment, along with two dozen recruiters across the military and current and former defense officials, and found young Americans are still largely making the same calculation that has driven enlistment for decades: steady pay, education benefits, job training and a direct path to the middle class.
