More: "It's legally and ethically dicey to have open conversations about this," says Graham Parsons, a philosophy professor at West Point who urged military officers and troops to consider resisting "politicized" orders in a New York Times op-ed in September. One concern is whether the military could tarnish itself with an incident like Kent State, when four college students were shot to death by jittery and poorly trained Ohio National Guardsmen in 1970.

"Soldiers are trained predominately to fight, kill and win wars," says Brian VanDeMark, a Naval Academy historian and author of the 2024 book Kent State: An American Tragedy. "Local police and state police are far better trained to deal with the psychology of crowds, which can become inherently unpredictable, impulsive and irrational. If you're not well trained to cope, your reaction might be inadequate and turn to force." He adds that at the Naval Academy as well as West Point, "my impression is this is an issue that is being thought about and worried about a lot but it's not openly discussed."