Veteran. Author. Visionary.
Special Operations Veteran | National Security Analyst | Policy Advocate
“A voice for the voiceless.”
Al Jazeera
Wes J. Bryant interviews with Al Jazeera on the U.S. strike that hit a wedding party in Iran—killing two women and two children.
He directly takes on J.D. Vance’s rationalization that “the U.S. does not target civilians.” He speaks to the pattern of endangerment and killing of civilians that has unfolded under Hegseth’s reign. He cites the indignation—and complete void in moral and legal accountability—that define the Trump administration and Hegseth’s Pentagon. And he speaks to the moral injury that will stay with U.S. service members for life who have had to take part in these operations.
BBC Newshour
Wes J. Bryant talks with @BBC Newshour in the wake of their latest ground reporting from Iran on the US strike against an elementary school during the opening hours of the war. The strike killed nearly two hundred civilians—most of them young children. Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth's Pentagon and the Trump administration continue to evade accountability…
Analysis & Investigative Contributions
ZETEO
A former Pentagon official on how America is wholly unprepared for this new and dangerous conflict.
![Cartels Are Not Terrorists. [Extended Version]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6099dc0a4c2a460341f95c22/1756996198130-22Q9FNLTNTKKZ9TTRXBN/Screenshot+2025-09-04+at+10.29.42%E2%80%AFAM.png)
RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT
Are US special forces going to be used for drug interdiction in Mexico, or even on American streets, next?
WES J. BRYANT
Americans need to face reality. The U.S. military is in the hands of a volatile, aspiring dictator, whose only decision calculus in employing its incredible might is how powerful it will make him look in a given moment and how feared and respected he will become…
BOSTON GLOBE
Diversity. Care for civilians. Loyalty to the Constitution. All the things Trump and Hegseth are undermining…
THE HILL
In the months since Israel launched its offensive into Gaza in the wake of the brutal terrorist attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7, the Israeli government and military have inflicted a catastrophic level of civilian harm on the Palestinian population...
THE HILL
Nearly three months into Israel’s war in Gaza, the casualty data that has emerged is deeply troubling to me as an expert in close air support and targeting...
WES J. BRYANT
I spent a military career in the war on terror as a US Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC)—the airpower experts who coordinate and call in airstrikes…
IRREGULAR WARFARE INITIATIVE
Explosive reports from major news outlets in September declared that, last year, tech guru and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk had shut down the Starlink service for the Ukrainian military in Crimea, thwarting Ukraine’s ability to conduct a major counteroffensive against the Russian navy…
MODERN WAR INSTITUTE
In the United States, we often analyze distant armed conflicts and counterterrorism efforts as if watching from a remote observation tower…
REAL CLEAR DEFENSE
June 2014 – Baghdad. We were treading a thin line, and we all knew it. I was the senior enlisted joint terminal attack controller for the 300-member special operations task force sent to Iraq to quell the rising threat of ISIS…
TASK & PURPOSE
They started the US war against ISIS. Now they have an important message for Trump on abandoning the Kurds…
AIR FORCE TIMES
It was late August 2014. I was one of the handful of American military forces in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. Only a few months before, ISIS laid siege…
LIEBER INSTITUTE FOR LAW AND LAND WARFARE
Last December, weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the New York Times ran an article that describes a highly secretive strike cell operating during the U.S. campaign in Syria and run by a small task force of U.S. special operators...