The DoD shake-up continues. On Tuesday, Stephen Feinberg—Trump’s pick for Deputy Secretary of Defense—testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and, over the course of a three-hour hearing, vowed to overhaul how the Pentagon operates.
The billionaire investor, major Trump donor, and co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, a $65B fund known for turning around failing businesses, drew parallels between his portfolio and the Pentagon.
“Our Department of Defense faces significant operational problems, delays, and cost overruns,” Feinberg wrote in response to the committee’s advance policy questions. “I have spent a career attacking these types of problems.”
War room: As Deputy SecDef, Feinberg would be responsible for the day-to-day ops of the DoD—essentially acting as the military’s COO. He said he would oversee a full audit of the Department and reallocate budget towards advanced technology and the fight with China. According to Feinberg, the DoD should:
- Ensure requirements are “far less rigid, far less gold-plated, much easier to achieve, less costly, and much quicker to meet.”
- Cut some “unnecessary” departments and legacy programs for the sake of efficiency.
- Collaborate with more companies to drive innovation and reduce reliance on a few primes.
- Adopt a “focused and agile culture of innovation.”
- Feld commercial technologies faster and at scale while working more with commercial and nontraditional defense tech firms.
Swarmy: Replicator stans, fear not. Feinberg signaled support—at least for now—for the autonomous weapons initiative, saying he would “evaluate” its effectiveness.
“The Department must utilize all of the authorities available to acquire capabilities to meet the most pressing and urgent needs, to include the capabilities being accelerated through Replicator,” he wrote.
He also said that he would push for more private capital investment in the Pentagon through the Office of Strategic Capital, the Strategic Capital Advisory Council, and the National Security Capital Forum.
Beware the bear: As is often the case lately, there was a giant, Russia-shaped elephant in the hearing room. In his advance policy questions, Feinberg wrote that Russia is a threat to the United States and said that it has invaded Ukraine. However, during questioning Tuesday, he refused to do so.
“I’m not privy to the details of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, what the sensitivities are, what the president’s trying to accomplish, so I’d be afraid to speak out of turn and undermine that,” Feinberg said.
Snip-snip: When pushed by Senate Democrats on the DoD’s planned staffing and budget cuts, Feinberg hedged—he said he hadn’t been part of the process yet. He also said that he expected some of the planned 61,000 personnel cuts would be “people who want to retire, people who would like [to] resign early.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) accused Feinberg of “profiteering” and said he had conflicts of interest due to Cerberus’ major defense investments in everything from hypersonics to drones. Feinberg denied the characterization.