Mark Alexander Milley (born 20 June 1958) is a retired United States Army general who served as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2023.

[6][14] There he joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps,[15] and in 1980 graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics after completing a 185-page-long senior thesis titled "The Irish Republican Army: A Critical Analysis of Revolutionary Guerrilla Organization in Theory and Practice".

At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, Milley described the areas targeted for modernization, including tanks, aircraft and weapons.

Also known as SFABs, these permanent units were established in Fort Benning with a core mission to conduct security cooperation activities and serve as a quick response to combatant commander requirements.

Beyond developing future warfighting concepts, eight cross-functional teams conducted research to further the Army's modernization priorities: long-range precision fires, next-generation combat vehicles, air and missile defenses, soldier lethality, synthetic training environments, future vehicle lift platforms, and assured positioning, navigation, and timing.

[45] In early 2017, Milley and then-Sergeant Major of the Army Daniel A. Dailey began considering the possibility of bringing back an iconic two-tone uniform known as the "Pinks and Greens" to honor the "greatest generation" of soldiers who fought in World War II.

[51] When confronted by a journalist from The Wall Street Journal in October 2018, Milley reversed these decisions, ordering the study published officially and with a foreword from himself.

[51] Within days of this revelation, two members of Congress who sit on the House Armed Services Committee (Reps. Jackie Speier, D-California, and Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona) sent a letter to Army leaders expressing their anger over the delay.

In a press release accompanying the letter to Milley and Esper, Speier said, "This is simply the Army being unwilling to publicly air its mistakes.

It outlined the possibility of blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war due to collapses of the country's aging power grid, its food supply systems, and the U.S. military.

That continued a series of meetings between the American and Russian military chiefs reestablished by Milley's predecessor Joseph Dunford in 2017 to ensure open communication and reduce the risks in conflict areas.

[73][74] On June 1, 2020, during the protests in Washington, D.C. which followed the murder of George Floyd, Milley, in combat uniform, walked with the president from the White House across Lafayette Square to St. John's Episcopal Church about half an hour after federal officers and police had used tear gas and other riot control tactics to disperse protestors, drawing sharp criticism from former military officers and others.

[86][87] After losing his bid for reelection in November 2020, Trump and his allies made attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, presaging the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

According to I Alone Can Fix It, a July 2021 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Milley became concerned Trump was preparing to stage a coup, and held informal discussions with his deputies about possible ways to thwart it, telling associates: "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed.

Milley reportedly told police and military officials preparing to secure Joe Biden's presidential inauguration: "Everyone in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier, we're going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power.

[96] According to a September 2021 Axios report, in mid-2020 Pentagon officials were concerned about the Chinese having received bad intelligence from dubious sources that had them worried about a possible surprise U.S. strike against China.

[110] Two days later he told CNN that "he likely would not have been informed of such routine engagements that either his office or Milley would have had with China" and that he was criticizing the call in October, not the one in January.

[103] Milley's spokesman said, "All calls from the Chairman to his counterparts, including those reported, are staffed, coordinated and communicated with the Department of Defense and the interagency".

[114] After the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Milley also spoke to other military leaders around the world, including in the United Kingdom, to reassure them "that the U.S. government was strong and in control".

[115] Woodward and Costa also wrote that after the attack on the Capitol, Milley became concerned Trump might "go rogue", telling staff "You never know what a president's trigger point is".

[104] On 8 January, Milley assured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a call that "the nuclear triggers are secure and we're not going to do—we're not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral, or unethical to happen".

[120] Trump also said that if the reporting was true, then he believed Milley should be "tried for treason" for talking to Li "behind the President's back and telling China that he would be giving them notification" of an American attack.

[139] He also wrote that "Trump, Rubio and all the rest of the rabid partisans who accused a decorated combat veteran of treason based on a hasty misreading of a book excerpt" needed to retract their statements and apologize.

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said that he had "no concerns that Milley might have exceeded his authority" and that Democratic lawmakers "were circumspect in our language but many of us made it clear that we were counting on him to avoid the disaster which we knew could happen at any moment".

[144] Upon the inauguration of Joe Biden as president in January 2021 Milley was invited to remain in his position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and accepted the offer.

[152] On June 30, 2021, Trump suggested that Milley should resign, implying that he was unwilling "to defend [the US military] from the Leftist Radicals who hate [the United States] and [its flag]".

[170] In late September 2021, Milley, at hearings before both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees said that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and evacuation from Kabul was "a logistical success but a strategic failure".

The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) appointed him the Charles and Marie Robertson visiting professor and lecturer from February 2024 until June 2025.

[188][189] On January 20, 2025, President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Mark Milley giving him protection from future potential prosecution by the incoming Trump administration.

[190][191] At midnight (January 20–21), Trump announced on Truth Social that he was firing Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, along with three other Biden appointees.