As of Tuesday, January 16, 2024, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been either hospitalized or “working from home” for the entire year, despite the increasing hostilities in the Middle East. According to aides and White House spokespeople, Austin has approved and overseen numerous military operations during that time from wherever he’s been, without skipping a beat, and without any type of secure comms compromise, just as if he was in his office at the Pentagon, with all of the advanced technology available there. For the first five days or so of Austin’s stay at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, nobody outside of Austin’s immediate circle of aides — well, in the United States government, at least — even knew that anything unusual was happening or that Austin was actually in the intensive care unit.