{"id":5801,"date":"2026-02-17T02:45:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/men-lie-strategies-lie-numbers-dont\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T02:45:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:45:53","slug":"men-lie-strategies-lie-numbers-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/men-lie-strategies-lie-numbers-dont\/","title":{"rendered":"Men lie, strategies lie\u2014numbers don\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Measuring the frequency of words and themes in a document can offer insights, reveal underlying messages, and even illuminate what\u2019s on the minds of its writers. The 2026 National Defense Strategy is meant to help align ends, ways, and means, and to signal goals and values. But to find the truth, sometimes you just have to count.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This kind of content analysis can act like an X-ray for a document, unveiling structural DNA that the authors themselves might not realize they\u2019ve left behind. The cold, hard math of the text itself can reveal overall priorities or even a \u201cSay-Do\u201d gap. For instance, if a corporate strategy has five mentions of\u00a0\u201ccustomers\u201d but 50 of \u201cshareholders,\u201d\u00a0you know who the company cares most about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also tracks rhetorical inflation\u2014i.e., whether the strategy is largely actionable or mostly fluff. A high frequency of \u201caspiration\u201d words with a low frequency of \u201cresource\u201d words usually signals a strategy that lacks a real execution plan. Tone and context can also be indicative. As an illustration, a strategy paper heavy on defensive terminology suggests an organization playing not to lose vs one with more aggressive terms is seeking change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beyond raw counts, identifying semantic networks\u2014that is, words that appear near each other\u2014can also reveal logic and emotional clusters. For instance, if the word \u201ccloud\u201d is consistently clumped near terms like \u201ccost overrun,\u201d the organization is likely not a fan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is not said can be just as telling, as Sherlock Holmes said about the\u00a0dog that didn’t bark. If a previously “vital” product line suddenly drops to zero mentions, you\u2019ve identified a pivot or a failure that the text isn’t explicitly admitting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While words have power, word counts can show who has power. In documents produced by co-authors or even committees, content analysis can reveal who has the true hand in the relationship, which voice had more sway in the crafting and editing. This is especially important inside government, where the process of getting various offices and leaders to agree to a published \u201cstrategy\u201d involves not just linguistic compromise, but also bureaucratic and even ideological battles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, no matter how thorough, a \u201cnormal\u201d read is subject to your cognitive biases. You tend to notice what you\u2019re already looking for. You react based on pre-existing views of everything from the authors to the issues. But as the great rhetorician\u00a0Jay-Z reminds us, \u201cMen lie, women lie, numbers don’t.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Top themes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of all its issues, themes, and topics, the new National Defense Strategy\u00a0is most concerned\u00a0with \u201callies,\u201d who are mentioned 61 times. That’s more often, per thousand words, than the\u00a0151 mentions in the\u00a02022 strategy issued by President Biden\u2019s team or the 20 in the 2018 summary document issued during Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

More striking is the shift in\u00a0tone. Just over half of the mentions of allies\u00a0in the 2026 strategy appear\u00a0in a demanding or derogatory context. Allies are not described this way in the 2018 or 2022 documents.<\/p>\n

By the numbers, the national defense strategy’s second major focus is \u201cTrump.\u201d The president gets\u00a052 mentions, plus his face in half of the document’s ten photos. The 2018 strategy made\u00a0no mention of\u00a0President Trump, and the 2022 strategy mentioned \u201cPresident Biden\u201d twice. The contrast again is not just in the number, but the tone. More than two-thirds of the mentions of \u201cTrump\u201d in the strategy are linked to terms of praise such as \u201cdecisively\u201d or \u201ccourageously.\u201d The strategy also declares, twice, that \u201cPresident Trump is leading the nation into a new golden age.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The third-most-important topic, at 48 mentions, is American leaders who are not President Trump. There were no such mentions in the previous strategies, which were more typical ends-ways-means guides to the future. Here too, each mention is negative in tone or context: for example, the document says former leaders\u00a0\u201cneglected\u2014even rejected\u2014putting Americans and their concrete interests first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dueling voices<\/strong><\/p>\n

Analysis of the 2026 NDS reveals two editorial voices, likely reflecting the different writers and editors behind them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first voice is political-ideological. It uses rhetoric foreign to traditional military documents, such as aggressive adjectives (previous policies are \u201cgrandiose nation-building projects,\u201d \u201cself-congratulatory pledges,\u201d and \u201crudderless war\u201d), persona-centric language (such as crediting \u201cPresident Trump\u201d for \u201chistoric achievements\u201d), and a decidedly populist framing (\u201cAmerica First\u201d appears multiple times).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second voice is professional-strategic. It uses the technical and bureaucratic style of policy wonks and career military, with precise doctrinal language (\u201cline of effort,\u201d \u201cdenial defense,\u201d \u201cJoint Force,\u201d and \u201coperational flexibility\u201d), and analytical and data-driven assessments (\u201cnominal GDP\u201d and \u201ceconomic center of gravity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Overall, the political-ideological voice overshadows the\u00a0professional-strategic voice, especially in the introduction and conclusion, which customarily summarize a document\u2019s overall message.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Within these voices, word analysis indicates\u00a0three major narrative themes. The first is \u201cpeace through strength,\u201d which appears 13 times. It is hardly a novel theme; it has been espoused by Emperor Hadrian, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and, more recently, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. But its frequency in the new NDS is a sharp increase from two mentions in 2018 and none in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second theme, at 11 mentions, is \u201cburden-sharing\u201d among allies. This theme was absent in 2018 and appeared three times in 2022, and was\u00a0then only used in the sense of \u201cnuclear burden-sharing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tied for second is \u201cdefense industrial base.\u201d While the topic has been reported as a new focus of U.S. strategy, its frequency is statistically similar to the nine mentions it received in the 2022 document.<\/p>\n

New words<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2026 NDS includes several terms and focus areas that have not appeared in earlier such documents.<\/p>\n

The most frequent\u00a0is the\u00a0Trump administration’s moniker for\u00a0the agency that issued the document:\u00a0\u201cDepartment of War,\u201d used 27 times. A department’s name can only officially be changed by Congress, so the document\u2019s title \u201cNational Defense Strategy\u201d is not included in that count.<\/p>\n

In second place is “narco-terrorist,” which is an interesting reframing of a threat. \u201cTerrorism\u201d and \u201cterrorist\u201d are hardly new terms; they collectively appear 18 times in 2026, up from 14 times in 2022 and 22 times in 2018. However, two-thirds of the mentions in the new strategy take the form of \u201cnarco-terrorists,\u201d which did not appear in either of the previous two strategies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A similar reframing takes place around threats within or near U.S. national territory. The new document mentions \u201chomeland\u201d 28 times, down from 58 in 2022. But \u201cWestern Hemisphere\u201d and \u201chemispheric\u201d get 13 mentions, up from just two in previous strategies. This regional focus is reinforced by four mentions of the “Monroe Doctrine,” which did not appear in the 2022 or 2018 documents. “Greenland\u201d appears five times, after not being an area of discussion in either the prior Trump or Biden national defense strategy documents.<\/p>\n

Finally, the document also includes five mentions of \u201cwarrior ethos.\u201d It is a new term for U.S. national defense strategy documents, but notably each use talks about \u201crestoring\u201d it.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s left out<\/strong><\/p>\n

Defense analysts often focus on what\u2019s on the page, but the real intelligence can often lie in what\u2019s been scrubbed or reduced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the new document does not mention \u201cclimate\u201d or \u201cdiversity,\u201d which appeared 13 and eight times, respectively, in the previous version. More striking is the absence of \u201cTaiwan,\u201d which was mentioned four times in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The strategy is also mute on the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency,\u201d or DOGE, effort, a signature (and controversial) part of the first year of the Trump Pentagon that arguably had the largest effect on the future \u201cmeans\u201d side of any discussion of U.S. defense strategy.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most striking, though, is the absence of action items. As a parallel, when business analysts examine company strategy documents, they often chart the ratio between abstract aspiration<\/em> terms (e.g., \u201csynergy,\u201d \u201cseamless,\u201d \u201cworld-class\u201d) and concrete verbs<\/em> (e.g., \u201cprocure,\u201d \u201cdivest,\u201d \u201ctest\u201d). The 2026 NDS lacks any mention of force planning or the size and shape of the military, which consumed entire sections of past US defense strategies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Declining importance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beyond omissions, there are also notable areas that the new strategy does not like to talk about as much as past documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most significant reduction is mentions of \u201cChina\u201d or \u201cPRC,\u201d which dropped from 101 mentions in 2022 to 26 in the new document. The tone has shifted as well: four of the discussions of China emphasize a goal of being respectful towards Beijing and the rest offer reassurance that U.S. strategy\u2019s goal simply is to deter but not threaten it. By contrast, the 2022 strategy called the Chinese military a \u201cpacing challenge\u201d\u2014the phrase, which appeared 10 times, is absent from the new version\u2014while the 2018 version was directly adversarial, using descriptors like \u201cChina is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia\u201d sees a similar decline in frequency\u201415 mentions, down from 89 in 2022\u2014and a marked defanging of tone. Three-quarters of the 2026 mentions of Russia in the strategy downplay its threat\u2014for example, describing it as \u201cmanageable\u201d by Europe with less U.S. help. This is quite different from the 2022 discussion of Russia and, even more, the 2018 strategy that declared \u201cRussia wants to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.\u201d Related, \u201cUkraine\u201d falls from 13 mentions in 2022 to four in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iran and North Korea are similarly downgraded in rhetorical importance. Mentions of \u201cIran\u201d fall to 13 from 33 mentions in 2022, while the nine mentions of \u201cNorth Korea\u201d and \u201cDPRK\u201d are down from 34 in the previous version.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Defense technology, long a pillar of U.S. strategies, gets far shorter shrift in the new document. \u201cCyber\u201d declines to six mentions, from 32 in 2022 and eight in 2018. \u201cBio\u201d threats and tech, mentioned eight times in 2022 and five in 2008, go entirely unmentioned. And, while AI may have drastically taken off in the last few years, it only gets one mention in the new US National Defense Strategy, as compared to 4 in 2022 and 2 in 2018. Even “missile defense” is largely absent as a broader concept. The \u201cGolden Dome\u201d project is mentioned just three times, a stark contrast to the 48 times that \u201cmissile defense\u201d appeared in 2022, bolstered by the deliberate accompanying Missile Defense Review.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, \u201cSpace\u201d as a domain or issue of conflict shrank drastically. After being discussed six times in the 2018 document, it skyrocketed to 41 times in the 2022 document. It plummeted back to earth with just two mentions in the 2026 document, despite the creation of the Space Force being one of the more significant national defense actions of Trump\u2019s first administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

No strategy fully survives contact with a changing world. So the raw numbers in the new document don\u2019t directly tell us what happens next\u2014in everything from defense budgets and military sizing to where, when, and against whom the U.S. military might be asked to use force.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But overall word counts and their patterns do reveal something maybe more important. At least by the raw numbers, America\u2019s official national defense strategy now has drastically changed priorities, interests, tones, narratives, and even voices. As such, it may be the most revelatory strategy ever written.\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n