Ex-CISA Head Easterly: Rescinded West Point Post Victim of ‘Manufactured Outrage’
Jen Easterly, the former head of the country’s top cybersecurity agency, a West Point graduate, ex-U.S. Army officer, and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, will not be allowed to teach at her alma mater, becoming the latest target of President Trump and his MAGA followers.
Easterly, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) for three years under former President Biden, had been set to head up West Point’s Department of Social Sciences – also known as SOSH – but had her offer rescinded after Laura Loomer, a high-profile figure in right-wing circles and a favorite of Trump, singled her out in a message posted on X (formerly Twitter) July 29 and addressed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Looks like some of your underlings are trying to screw you,” Loomer wrote. “There are clearly a lot of Biden holdovers at DOD undermining the Trump admin.”
She accused Easterly of using her position at CISA to “silence Trump supporters under Biden,” asking why such people are “getting elevated to high-level jobs under the Trump admin? There are some serious moles over at DOD [Department of Defense]. The vetting crisis is getting much worse.”
A day later, Daniel Driscoll, the secretary of the Army, an Iraq war veteran, and a former classmate of Vice President JD Vance at Yale Law School, pulled the West Point position from Easterly.
A Matter of ‘Sacred Trust’
In a LinkedIn post on July 31, Easterly said being removed from the job was “a casualty of casually manufactured outrage that drowned out the quiet labor of truth and the steady pulse of integrity,” adding that the situation was about something more than herself.
“It’s about the sacred trust we place in those who wear the uniform – and the damage threatened when that trust is eroded by partisanship,” she wrote. “The U.S. military – including its academies – must remain an institution above politics, grounded in service to the Constitution. When outrage is weaponized and truth discarded, it tears at the fabric of unity and undermines the very ethos that draws brave young men and women to serve and sacrifice: Duty, Honor, Country. We must guard against the corrosive force of division – and stand firm in defense of these values that should bind us together.”
Easterly added that it’s “also about what we teach the next generation – about moral courage, judgment, and most importantly, character. It is not in comfort but in challenge that the warrior spirit is called forth – and the soul’s compass tested.”
Trump and CISA
CISA and some of its former leaders have been targets of Trump since his return to office in January. He proposed cutting its budget by as much as 17% – about $491 million – arguing the it should return to its “core mission” of protecting the country against cyberattacks from outside threats and stop trying to silence him and his supporters. The administration accused the agency of censoring right-wing voices and refusing to support his accusations that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was rigged against him.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in April made similar arguments during a speech at the RSA Conference, saying, “we’re going to make sure that we need to put CISA back to focusing on its core mission. They were deciding what was truth and what was not. And it’s not the job of CISA to be the ‘Ministry of Truth.’ It’s to be a cybersecurity agency that works to protect this country.”
In April, Trump put his sights on Christopher Krebs, who Trump picked to lead the agency he created during his first term. The president, in a memorandum, stripped Krebs, who at the time was the CIO and chief public policy officer for cybersecurity vendor SentinelOne, of his security clearance and asked the Justice Department to investigate him for his actions during his tenure with CISA. Trump accused him of being “a significant bad-faith actor.”
The 2020 Election
Trump had long criticized Krebs for saying the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in U.S. history, pushing back at Trump’s argument that he unfairly lost to Biden. Trump fired Krebs from the CISA post before leaving office.
A week after Trump issued his memorandum targeting him, Krebs resigned from SentinelOne, telling employees at the company that the situation was his to deal with and not the company’s, which was also targeted by Trump. The president threatened to strip the security clearances from any SentinelOne employees who held them.
In her LinkedIn post, Easterly said that when offered the position of Distinguished Chair of SOSH, she “felt a deep sense of responsibility. To give back. To guide the next generation. To inspire and help prepare young leaders for the promise of an era defined by technological innovation and disruption: autonomy, space, cyber, quantum, and most importantly – powerful AI.”
She called the Trump Administration’s recently released AI Action Plan “largely excellent” and said it “reinforced just how essential it is for our military leaders to understand and effectively leverage these technologies to fight and win our nation’s wars.”
