The news that the president-elect of the US Donald Trump appoints veteran military and Fox News host to Defense Department Pete Hegseth at first it caused shock among Pentagon officials. And then the alarm went off.

Hegseth will lead 1.3 million active-duty servicemen and another 750,000 officials, hold key meetings with US allies and coordinate strikes against Islamic State and its Iranian allies. And while Hegseth has military experience, he has never run an organization larger than a small NGO.

“Would you trust him to run Walmart?” asked a former Pentagon official. “Because we have so many employees”.

“People are shocked” a Pentagon official said. “He’s just a Fox News personality who has never worked for the government,” he added.

POLITICO spoke with six current and former Pentagon officials yesterday morning after Trump announced Hegseth for the Defense Department.

All six, like many others officials in Washington were not only surprised by the move, but also expressed doubt that Hegseth could run such a complex bureaucracy.

“It’s a huge bureaucracy, you have to understand how it works to support national security around the world,” an official noted. “It’s boring and has nothing to do with going on Fox News and being the boss.”.

Another official raises the following parameter: The selection of the inexperienced Hegseth may cause fear among about 80 other officials who will take positions in the Pentagon, since the defense secretary can make decisions on his own, ignoring the advice of his subordinates.

“Would you feel comfortable being undersecretary if this guy is defense secretary?” the former Pentagon official said. “Who would want to be the deputy minister when a guy like that has the power to make decisions?”

In a request for comment from POLITICO, Donald Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions about Hegseth’s experience, but instead sent a copy of the US president-elect’s announcement about the appointment.

Others reported that they are still assessing the situation after selecting a person with no relevant experience. They reported doing a lot of Google searches to find information about their new boss.

“I knew little about him”another official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. Some foreign diplomats said Tuesday that they rushed to order Hegseth’s latest book online after his appointment was announced, as they seek information about someone they didn’t know and don’t know what his priorities are.

Many current and former Defense Department officials had considered Trump’s first round of national security picks for his new cabinet, including the announcement of Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida as national security adviser and plans to pick Sen. Marco Rubio as foreign minister, in a sign that the new government will tap more mainstream candidates for top jobs.

But Hegseth, who not only disagrees with the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion programs but has also called on Trump to fire top military officers, has sparked fears that the new secretary is poised to shake up the agency.

The news came hours after the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s transition team was considering a draft executive order to create a “warrior board” of retired military officers to review active-duty generals and admirals, which which had already irritated Defense Ministry officials.

Some officials fear Hegseth will jump right in with program cuts without even seeing the landscape first. “There’s a lot of red tape to deal with”a third defense ministry official said on condition of anonymity. “But some things are there for a reason. If you’re disarming a bomb, you have to know which wire to cut, you can’t cut them all together.”

The official hopes Hegseth may change his approach once he begins receiving classified national security information during the transition. “Once they get that initial briefing and see everything that’s going on behind the scenes, I think they’re going to take a step back and realize everything they don’t know.”POLITICO’s source said.

Hegseth’s personal life came under the spotlight after Trump announced his selection. The Fox News anchor has reportedly had multiple extramarital affairs. In 2018, when he was said to be under consideration to become Trump’s secretary of veterans, American Public Media reported that Hegseth’s political action committee in Minnesota spent a third of its money on Christmas parties and that the host once paid his brother, who he had no work experience, $108,000 to work for him at a non-profit organization.

The quality that usually made Pentagon chiefs successful “is it legislative or bureaucratic experience – after all, the Department of Defense is a $780 billion enterprise with 2 million employees and a large and intrusive board (Congress)”said Cory Sheik, director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. “Also, given the serious consequences of mistakes in dealing with the use of force on behalf of the country, securing cross-party support is a valuable asset.”

Eric Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense in the Bush administration, said that even long-serving officials such as Robert Gates and Leon Panetta found that nothing prepared them for the enormity of the Pentagon administration’s work. “After the presidency, I think it’s the second hardest job”he argued.

With the Pentagon helping its allies fight two wars and facing the prospect of fighting a war of its own in the coming years in the Middle East, Hegseth’s lack of experience raises doubts in some minds about whether he would know who to call. in a possible crisis.