Multiple prominent military veterans have recoiled at reports of a Pentagon program that monitors social media for the stated purpose of protecting top officers from “embarrassment.”

The US Army Protective Services Battalion, which provides Secret Service-style protections for current and former top brass, sought a toolkit last year to help surveil social media, according to a procurement document first reported by The Intercept.

Such a tool would ostensibly be used to help the service’s Protective Intelligence Branch (PIB) scour social media for “direct, indirect, and veiled” online threats as well as “positive or negative sentiment relating specifically to our senior high-risk personnel,” per the document.

PIB strives to prevent “assassination, kidnapping, injury or embarrassment” of those under its protection, according to Army records flagged in The Intercept report.

Top current and former military brass under PIB’s protection includes individuals such as the Secretary of Defense, Army Chief of Staff, and other high-ranking leaders like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, who’s slated for retirement later this year.

Critics of the program contend that it is a waste of resources and could be ripe for abuse.

They also fear that PIB may lean on the social media trawl tool to minimize public criticism of military leaders.

“This expense wouldn’t be required if the generals focused on winning wars. I can say that definitively, because after I pointed out that they lost a war, they monitored my entire family and I for years,” former Marine Lt. Col Stuart Scheller told The Post.

Scheller, the author of “Crisis in Command,” was relieved of his duties in August 2021 after calling out the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Why are we wasting resources on what’s quasi-spying or at least monitoring the First Amendment rights of our citizens?” asked Mark Geist, a former Marine who was a member of the annex security team that fought in Benghazi back in 2012 and founded the Shadow Warriors Project.

“Releasing information that this is happening is an attempt to scare off critics that may oppose their opinion,” he added. “We fought to protect the freedom of speech these people are trying to attack, why? Because your feelings are hurt?! The government works for the people not the other way around.”

“We’ve seen both the DOJ and DoD be weaponized against us — American citizens — as the Pentagon uses our military to monitor our social platforms for negative comments against military Generals,” Marine veteran Chad Robichaux, who helped spearhead one of the largest civilian evacuation efforts from Afghanistan, told The Post.

Robichaux also suggested that the program detailed by The Intercept violates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars the military from acting in a civilian law enforcement capacity.

“This is not only a threat to our personal liberties, but to democracy as we know it,” he added. “Is America still the land of the free or a military state?”

“While our adversaries are focused on military strategy and increasing capabilities, our Pentagon is worried about mean social media posts and pronouns. This is another example of the backward priorities of the Biden administration who have put military readiness on the back burner,” said Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), an Army veteran.

Although a specific name for the toolkit does not appear to be listed in the procurement document, the file indicates that the contract was given to Virginia-based SEWP Solutions, LLC.

The company has reportedly produced technology for the Pentagon similar to that described in the procurement document in the past.

A spokesperson for the Army Criminal Investigation Division did not return a request for comment.