If confirmed, I will fight hard to stamp out sexual assault, to rid our ranks of racists and extremists, and to create a climate where everyone fit a… - Lloyd Austin

The book recounts a tense phone call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart in October 2022.
"If you did this, all the restraints that we have been operating under in Ukraine would be reconsidered," Austin said to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to Woodward. "This would isolate Russia on the world stage to a degree you Russians cannot fully appreciate."
"I don't take kindly to being threatened," Shoigu responded.
"Mr. Minister," Austin said, according to Woodward, "I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don't make threats."

We want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory. We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. So it has already lost a lot of military capability, and a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability. We want to see the international community more united, especially NATO, and we’re seeing that, and that’s based upon the hard work of, number one, President Biden, but also our Allies and partners who have willingly leaned into this with us as we’ve imposed sanctions and as we’ve moved very rapidly to demonstrate that we’re going to defend every inch of NATO.

We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed. (U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement Friday)