Last week, amidst the Signalgate-that-keeps-on-giving, the Senate Armed Services committee held a whirlwind confirmation hearing for four of Trump’s critical DoD appointees:
- Troy Meink for Secretary of the Air Force
- Michael Duffey for Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
- Emil Michael for Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
- Keith Bass for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs
Duffey and Michael, in particular, will be critical to the Pentagon’s sworn goal of modernizing the US military and deploying more cutting-edge tech on the battlefield. So, we thought we should get to know them a lil bit.
Tech to the top: Let’s start with Emil Michael. He was chief business officer at Uber from 2013–2017 and has helped build several successful tech companies, including Klout, TellmeNetworks, and Bandit.
- Trump initially considered Michael as Secretary of Transportation, but went with Sean Duffy instead.
- Michael stepped down at Uber after being implicated in a series of high-profile scandals, including a visit to an escort bar in Seoul during a business trip in 2014.
- Tech leaders pitched Michael for a Trump nomination during a series of closed-door meetings at Mar-a-Lago last fall.
- Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has argued that Michael’s tech career and links to tech companies and their executives (including Elon Musk) present a conflict of interest.
As, essentially, CTO of the Pentagon, Michael will be central to scaling up many of the technologies we talk about all the time—autonomous systems, AI-powered weaponry, advanced and hypersonic missile systems, and the like.
Michael intends to bring a commercial approach to driving innovation in the Pentagon. In advanced policy questions before the hearing, he wrote that he would “look for opportunities to implement…best practices that [he’s] used in the private sector to drive innovation at speed and with efficiency throughout the organization.”
Mixed signals: Now, on to Duffey. The Trump loyalist is actually already working in the Pentagon—he was sworn in as Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff in January. As such, he bore the brunt of the Signalgate-related questioning during the hearing.
But, group chats aside, who is Duffey? He’s served:
- In a range of roles in the Pentagon, including chief of staff to the under secretary of defense for research & engineering and deputy director for systems analysis within the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
- As associate director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term.
- As a member of Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016.
Senator Warren also accused Duffey of violating the law and disregarding congressional authority for directing the Pentagon to withhold $391M in military aid to Ukraine in 2019.
As under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment (USD(A&S)), he’ll be in charge of weapons buying and sustainment for the Pentagon. If confirmed, his office will oversee a budget of about $311B.
Five-sided behemoth: Pentagon leadership is shaping up to be super-bullish on defense tech and commercial defense innovation. Last week, Trump also tapped Tectonic moderator and DIU principal Mike Dodd for assistant secretary of defense for critical technologies, and all of his service secretary picks (including Meink) have said that the military really needs to change its approach to tech.
But the question is—how quickly will they actually be able to reshape the giant bureaucracy that is the DoD?