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From the Military Times 9/2021: The future of special operations may look a lot different than the GWOT aesthetic we’ve come to know
The article is old at this point, but I've seen recent discussion about it in various Twitter/YouTube areas and while that discussion was definitely one-sided, it was very much culture war.
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This following section got attention interpreted as saying that SOCOM was going to prioritize diversity hiring over meritocratic hiring
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Emphasis added below, has been interpreted in the context of SOCOM as meaning people dying.
The article does a bad job of contextualizing it, but SOCOM historically was not just direct-action combatants. US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) got their start as the eponymous "military advisors" working with and training various US friendly guerilla groups or US friendly governments dealing with US unfriendly guerillas/rebellions across Asia and South America. During GWOT (global war on terror), something like extracting/apprehending intelligence targets became much more common1 and the need for highly trained door kickers to do that work grew. In a post-GWOT environment, there could be an argument for going back to roots, deemphasizing combat experience and emphasizing ability to integrate with local forces but this is not that.
It's notable that the main thrust of the article is that what has been considered one of the more meritocratic parts of the military will need to go the DEI route and seems to try to caveat that any potential reductions in effectiveness are acceptable costs. This in the background of a looming recruitment crisis.
1: linking only as a point of reference on operational tempo, rest of that story is a whole different iceberg. The related increase in operational tempo at the bottom of the pyramid and pulling in other MOSs to meet demands is where the "basically infantry" meme comes from.
Seems like a part of a general trend within the US Armed Forces.
Two days ago the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force have jointly published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Since it's behind paywall, I will quote the entire thing and boldface the part that stands out to me as relevant to this conversation:
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