US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made no secret of his desire for a manlier military.
He consistently argues that the US Armed Forces lowered their combat standards in order to include women. He’s staged various photo ops in which he exercises and pumps iron with service members. In his speeches, Hegseth says that the Trump administration is restoring a “warrior ethos” to its legions of “warfighters.”
Now he has a rather dubious plan to guarantee that the troops are as macho as possible: testosterone screenings and, in cases where an individual’s testosterone is judged to be deficient, voluntary hormone therapy.
“Under the supervision of our world-class medical professionals, warfighters aged 30 and older are going to be tested annually as part of their periodic health assessment,” Hegseth said in a short video posted to his official X account on Wednesday. Those younger than 30 will be able to opt in to these evaluations as well, he explained.
“If treatment is recommended, it’s entirely your choice to receive testosterone replacement therapy,” Hegseth added.
Addressing service members directly, Hegseth said without offering evidence that the program would benefit “your performance, your resilience, and your long-term health.” He also declared that the initiative was “not about artificial enhancement,” but rather “restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.”
Adrian Dobs, who researches endocrine gonadal function at Johns Hopkins University, tells WIRED that she was “quite surprised that this is what they’re thinking about,” and that “it’s a very complicated issue to make the diagnosis of male hypogonadism,” the medical term for when the testicles aren’t producing enough testosterone.
Dobs says that Hegseth seems to be radically oversimplifying the complicated issues around making a diagnosis of low testosterone—including the variability of testosterone levels depending on the type of assay (or analysis) performed and even the time of day the test is conducted.
Because of circadian rhythms, she points out, the hormone is typically seen at “higher [levels] in the morning and lower throughout the day.” Another logistical problem, Dobs says, lies in individual circumstances. It’s one thing to test, for example, “a healthy person who sits at a desk” and quite another to test a person who is returning “from basic training or overseas and may have lost weight and was under a great deal of physical stress at the time,” as chronic stress can inhibit testosterone production.
Hegseth’s view on testosterone itself is “misinformed,” according to Dobs. “Testosterone is a very important hormone,” she says, and it plays a key role in puberty and masculinization. “But it is not something that’s going to make you smarter. It’s not something that’s going to make you live longer—we simply don’t have any data to suggest that.” The longevity claim, she adds, would be incredibly difficult to prove in any case.
The Pentagon declined to comment beyond Hegseth’s description of the screening and treatment process, so it’s unclear what specific results the Defense Department expects to achieve by administering testosterone to untold numbers of active duty service members, or whether women in the Armed Forces will also undergo hormone assessments. Neither has the Defense Department made public what scientific research and which medical experts, if any, informed this decision.
Aside from the problems with trying to define “normal” amounts of testosterone and standardizing the screening process, Dobs says, using testosterone replacement as an easy fix for deficiency ignores standard diagnostic practice, which is to identify and treat any underlying condition first. The potential root causes—from kidney or liver disease to diabetes—should be dealt with “before you launch into any hormonal intervention,” she says.
The recent explosive demand for “high T” tends to obscure the risks associated with use of the hormone.
“If a man is taking testosterone, his own testes are going to essentially shut off. They run the risk of having what they call atrophy of the testes, so that the testicles can get smaller,” Dobs says. Another associated side effect is a drop in sperm count, which she says should be a concern for service members in their twenties and thirties, “basically at the prime of their fertility.” Lowered sperm counts don’t automatically bounce back once a person quits testosterone, either. And testosterone can thicken the blood, forcing the heart to work harder.
None of these facts appear to have penetrated the MAHA movement or the Manosphere influencers who endorse its pseudoscience, including the belief that testosterone can be taken by any male as a sort of wonder drug. Conspiracist podcast kingpin Joe Rogan is quite open about his testosterone replacement therapy regimen; he recommends it for all men over 40. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is another proponent; he’s currently seeking, through the US Food and Drug Administration, to eliminate warning labels on TRT, including language related to the potential for adverse cardiovascular effects.
“This is not a simple, benign thing,” Dobs says of Hegseth’s proposal. “You just can’t do that without really knowing what’s fully going on with [a] patient.” While Kennedy and Rogan may claim that TRT has significantly improved their lives, she says, “when you look at the studies, it’s not so clear really what it does.” Testosterone treatments can certainly be effective in a range of cases, Dobs says, such as when men have clinically low T levels caused by a genetic abnormality, trauma, infection, or a pituitary tumor. That hardly makes it a one-size-fits-all prescription, however.
Nonetheless, Hegseth obviously sees it as a tool in his mission to reshape the Armed Forces along the lines of a particular masculinist and anti-diversity philosophy. Under his tenure, the Pentagon has attempted to purge transgender service members and prevent trans people from enlisting. He has imposed “male standard” fitness tests and blocked scheduled promotions of women and people of color. Top female officers and people of color have been banished from their posts without explanation, while officers of color have been ousted for perceived roles in what Hegseth has called “DEI woke shit.”
Most recently, the Navy has announced that it will stop issuing permanent shaving medical waivers to sailors with shaving-related health conditions, instead offering a year of medical treatment to give them a chance to meet a clean-shaven face requirement. If they still can’t, they’ll be removed. Last year, Hegseth issued a blanket ban on shaving waivers for almost all troops. A common reason for receiving a waiver is pseudofolliculitis barbae, which causes painful inflammation after shaving—it affects about 45 percent of Black service members and only 3 percent of white service members.
While the discriminatory intent of some of these measures is altogether glaring, the practical goals of the new testosterone directive remain hazy. Dobs says that Hegseth and the Defense Department aren’t offering any concrete “measure of success” to justify their belief in testosterone as a natural performance enhancer.
“What is the function that people are looking at that Hegseth wants?” Dobs asks. “Is he looking for somebody who’s going to be stronger on the field? Is he looking for someone who’s going to be smarter when they fly in an airplane? That’s a tough one to study.”
As with so many policies from Donald Trump’s administration, it may simply be about the vibes.
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