Today on the Hill, lawmakers are hearing from billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg, who is President Donald Trump’s pick to be Deputy Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.
Feinberg is co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, a firm that yielded deep ties to the defense industry. And that suggests potential conflicts of interest, but also a possibly very helpful familiarity with the U.S. military’s acquisition system, as Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported in December. Feinberg is testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing that began at 9:30 a.m. ET.
At Cerberus, Feinberg directed the firm’s investments toward the defense sector across a range of areas, from armored vehicles to aviation services to undersea cables. He’s also taken a particular interest in aerospace, through positions in companies like Vivace—a producer of specialty propulsion tanks—and investments in hypersonic missile testing businesses.
Key consideration: “As a successful investor, he may be in a position to conquer bureaucratic and management-practice hurdles that have long slowed acquisition reform,” Tucker writes. Read more, here.
Developing: Trump’s Army secretary pick could receive Senate confirmation today. Dan Driscoll served as a U.S. Army armor officer for four years, deployed to Iraq, and earned a Ranger tab before graduating from Yale Law School with Vice President JD Vance and becoming a financier. Driscoll had his confirmation hearing on Jan. 30 and received approval from the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 11. Stay tuned.
On the road today: Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, who is traveling to the U.S. military detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hegseth’s staff says he plans to “receive briefings on all mission operations at the base, including at the Migrant Operations Center and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.” He’s also planned a visit aboard the destroyer Thomas Hudner to thank troops “for their service and learn firsthand about their experiences at Guantanamo Bay,” he said in a statement.
Right-wing Fox pundit Laura Ingraham is flying with Hegseth. Ingraham has already posted a video showing her participation, and you can see that online here.
Noted: Hegseth is not taking any journalists who regularly cover the Pentagon, Idrees Ali of Reuters wrote Tuesday on social media.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson (watson.90 on Signal) and Bradley Peniston with Jennifer Hlad. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1870, Mississippi Republican Hiram Revels was sworn in as a U.S. senator, becoming the first African American member in either house of Congress.
Hegseth, Caine, and the legal requirements to lead the Joint Chiefs: The defense secretary was displeased Monday when Reuters’ Ali pointed out that the president’s pick to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Dan Caine, a retired Air Force lieutenant general—does not meet the legal requirements for the job, and will require a presidential waiver to serve in the advisory post. Title 10, as passed in the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act (and updated since the creation of the Space Force), state that a chairman must have previously served as:
(A) the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
(B) the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, or the Chief of Space Operations; or
(C) the commander of a unified or specified combatant command.
Caine has held none of those jobs, but Title 10 also provides an out: “The President may waive [those requirements] in the case of an officer if the President determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”
When asked about it on Monday, Hegseth interrupted the Reuters reporter and evaded the inquiry, replying, “I’m going to choose to reject your ‘unqualified’ question.”
ICYMI: What are Caine’s qualifications and what could it mean for the future of the Pentagon? Defense One’s Patrick Tucker explained on Friday.
Rewind: Fired Chairman Gen. CQ Brown had been on the job for just over a year. But it was long enough to draw Hegseth’s ire while employed as a right-wing personality on Fox’s weekend TV programming, where he railed against diversity programs that blossomed across the U.S. after the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota in May 2020. Hegseth, in a 2024 book, suggested that there was “doubt” about Brown’s credentials for the Joint Chiefs job.
“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill?” Hegseth wrote of Brown’s ascent to the Joint Chiefs. “We’ll never know but always doubt—which on its face seems unfair to [Brown]. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter.”
The bigger question: “What does that say about someone who assumes any Black or Latino person or woman in a position of authority got there through means other than talent and intelligence?” asked the editorial board at the San Antonio Express-News, which is Brown’s hometown newspaper. “We, in Brown’s hometown where his mother still lives, are proud of and thankful for his character, leadership and service,” the paper said in conclusion.
By the way: Hegseth just hired a right-wing podcaster to run the Pentagon’s digital media. According to an email sent to the Pentagon’s public affairs staff, newly-hired conservative podcaster Graham Allen “will further strengthen our ability to communicate effectively.” A Defense official confirmed the development Monday, but did not provide any details about Allen’s job description.
Allen: “I have been asked by the president and by Secretary Hegseth to serve my country again, and come to DC specifically to help with the Pentagon side of things,” he said in a recorded message aired on his Dear America podcast Monday morning. “And that’s all I’m going to get into there.”
For what it’s worth, Allen did not respond to a request from Defense One for more information about his job description, Meghann Myers reports. Read more, here.
Also: Trump tapped another right-wing podcaster to help lead the FBI. Dan Bongino, who once called the law-enforcement and counterintelligence bureau “irredeemably corrupt,” will now be its deputy director.
Why it matters: “For more than 100 years, the second-in-command has been a veteran special agent from within the bureau, someone well versed in its inner workings,” the New York Times reports. Bongino is neither a veteran agent, nor is he especially knowledgeable about its inner workings.
Background: “Bongino worked as a New York Police Department officer for several years in the 1990s before joining the Secret Service, where he served on the details of former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “He left the agency in 2011 and went on to lose three congressional races—two in Maryland and one in Florida—running as a Republican.”
But his big break came when Rush Limbaugh died, which gave Rush’s timeslot to Bongino and his radio show, where he demonstrated “a penchant for spreading misinformation — about the pandemic, the 2020 election and the F.B.I.,” the Times writes.
New name for Trump’s missile-defense effort. The “next-generation missile defense shield” dubbed “Iron Dome for America” in a Jan. 27 executive order is now being called “Golden Dome,” a defense official told Defense One on Monday.
Experts have said the plan will be very difficult and very costly, while NORTHCOM commander Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot told the Senate Armed Services Committee two weeks ago that it will also need significantly better technology than Israel’s.
What’s in a name: Israeli officials reportedly considered the name “Golden Dome” for the missile-defense system now called Iron Dome, but rejected it as too “ostentatious.”
The Pentagon’s IT agency wants to simplify the digital tools used for identity verification and systems access on unclassified networks across the military this year, starting with the Army, Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reported Monday.
The gist: Whether it’s from a cubicle or the battlefield, defense organizations generally use different tools to log in or access certain networks, systems, or digital environments. The Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA, wants to collapse everything into one solution. DISA started linking the Army’s ICAM solutions with the agency’s own, a unifying process called federation, in October, with plans to ultimately do that across the Defense Department. The agency also plans to expand the solution to classified networks as necessary.
“We expect to be done with the Army by the end of next month, actually by the end of March, and then roughly about three months later, be done with the Navy, followed by the Air Force, by the end of the fiscal year,” Brian Hermann, who leads DISA’s program executive officer for cyber, told reporters Friday. Continue reading, here.
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And lastly: Defense software firm Govini is hosting a Software & Data Summit tomorrow afternoon in Washington. At least eight uniformed officers are scheduled to speak, including Army chief Gen. Randy George, Gen. James Rainey of Army Futures Command, Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly of the Defense Logistics Agency, Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd of Indo-Pacific Command, and more.
That begins shortly before noon on Wednesday with a “fireside chat” featuring Gen. George and Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty. Registration required. View the agenda and details here.
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