In a video message released Thursday evening, Hegseth also lashed out at critics and the media for misrepresenting the pending moves as cuts to the military. He said President Donald Trump is committed to increasing resources for the armed forces, following through on campaign promises to boost defense spending.

“Beginning right away, we are pulling around 8%, or $50 billion, from [former President Joe Biden’s] budget plans,” he said. “We will move away from woke, non-lethal programs and instead spend that money on President [Donald] Trump’s priorities for our national budget.

“We’re asking the services to plan. It’s not a cut. It’s refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building a force that protects you, the American people.”

On Wednesday, acting Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Salesses released a statement acknowledging that military agency leaders had been ordered to cut 8% from their initial fiscal 2026 Defense Department budget plans. That budget outline had been expected to top $850 billion.

The news drew significant concern from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who were also informed that the moves could include an annual 8% cut for the next five years.

But Hegseth in his video said that any savings would be reinvested into other areas of the defense budget. He also said numerous security priorities — such as southwest border activities, nuclear modernization efforts, Virginia-class submarine procurement, cybersecurity efforts and core readiness training — would not face any budget reductions.

“This is great news for taxpayers and for our national security,” he said.

Hegseth did acknowledge that the department is working closely with officials from the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has spearheaded efforts to dramatically slash staffing at a number of federal agencies.

The defense secretary indicated that civilian worker staff cuts will come to his department soon, but said he believes the work will make military operations more efficient without compromising readiness.

“Bottom line, it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical, and to restore accountability within the federal workforce,” he said. “Taxpayers deserve to have us take a really thorough look at our workforce top to bottom, and to see where we can find and eliminate redundancy.”

Hegseth said officials would start with “poor performers amongst our probationary employees,” although dismissal efforts at other federal agencies have largely focused on job seniority and not worker performance.

He also promised that military leaders will “hire and reward hard-working employees who are central to the core fighting mission.”

Hegseth did not take any direct questions from reporters after the video’s release. He also did not address rumors of plans to fire top military officials viewed by Trump administration officials as too closely connected to the last president.

“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Acting Chief Information Officer at United States Department of Defense,” Beavers wrote in July on LinkedIn. The department’s website now lists her as acting CIO.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon did not immediately return a request for comment.

As the primary IT adviser to the defense secretary, Beavers is taking over from former CIO John Sherman, who stepped down in June to take a position outside government as dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Previously serving as the principal deputy CIO at the Pentagon, Beavers is well acquainted with the Defense Department’s many ongoing initiatives meant to secure the defense-industrial base, develop 5G technologies and explore artificial intelligence.

Since she came to the department, Beavers has worked on landmark endeavors like Project Herald, the Pentagon’s plan to transform digital intelligence sharing, and Fulcrum, the recently announced IT transformation strategy. The latter is where she is most focused now on building momentum, she said in her LinkedIn post.

“[That] gives you tangible steps to turn that strategic vision into an operational reality,” Beavers said at the 2024 TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore, which took place June 25-27. “It’ll be followed by an implementation plan, which will give some more information.”

The former Air Force intelligence officer and retired brigadier general comes to the position at a time when the DOD is beginning to put many of its theories around zero trust, cloud computing, machine learning and cybersecurity into practice.

The department for several years now released guidance thanks to the help of working groups and testing approaches via pilots. Now, officials say, it’s in a position to actually phase in solutions. The department has a goal to come up with a data tagging and labeling strategy by the end of the calendar year.

Beavers also said at TechNet Cyber that she anticipates growth in the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability procurement vehicle as other contracts begin to expire.

At the same time, challenges persist for Beavers and her office, including cyber workforce shortages, unpredictable funding and technical debt that separates the services from the modern approaches they’re after.

All the while, China looms as a major U.S. adversary on the digital battlefield, and attacks on public infrastructure underscore the urgency of predicting and intercepting cyberthreats.

The DOD is seeking $14.5 billion in fiscal 2025 for its cyberspace programs. According to the DOD’s website, Kevin Mulvihill is the new acting principal deputy CIO.

Clooney said in a New York Times opinion piece that he loves Biden, but the party would lose the presidential race as well as any control in Congress with him as the nominee.

“This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private,” wrote Clooney. He’s hosted several high-dollar Hollywood fundraisers, including for Biden last month.

Clooney argued the party should pick a new nominee at its convention next month, saying the process would be “messy” but “wake up” voters in the party’s favor, mentioning Vice President Kamala Harris and Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gavin Newsom of California among those from who the country should now hear.

Focusing much of his piece around Biden’s age, Clooney noted differences he saw in the 81-year-old president during their recent Los Angeles event compared to years past.

“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” Clooney wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Last month, Clooney, Julia Roberts and Barbra Streisand were among those who took the stage for a fundraiser that took in a record $30 million-plus for Biden, in hopes of energizing would-be supporters for a White House contest they said may rank among the most consequential in U.S. history.

Luminaries from the entertainment world have increasingly lined up to help Biden’s campaign. Leading up to the fundraiser, Clooney’s name appeared on numerous fundraising missives from the campaign, which he called “the fight of our lives.”

Representatives for Clooney did not immediately return a message seeking comment on insight into his decision, when precisely he had made it or how recently he had spoken with Biden.

Biden has refused to end his reelection bid after his weak debate performance against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump on June 27.

___

Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina. She can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

A new study by the nonpartisan nonprofit Partnership for Public Service identified more than 80 appointed positions spanning 15 cabinet agencies that were vacant for at least half the years between 2009 and 2023. These positions were without secretaries, chief financial officers, judicial experts and other critical leadership that require the advice and consent of the Senate via majority vote.

The report sheds more light on a well-known truth in public administration: the Senate confirmation process is often where presidential appointments go to die. Today, the process takes almost twice as long as it did during President Reagan’s term in the 1980s. The report indicates that the majority of extended vacancies are due to Senate inaction, as both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump nominated roughly the same amount of people to fill vacancies.

“The troubles faced by executive branch nominees in the Senate confirmation process have gotten worse year by year,” according to the report. “More nominees are left in limbo and those who eventually reach confirmation take longer than ever before to move through the process.”

The Senate confirmation timeline averages about 172 days under Biden and 153 days under Trump, but both presidents experienced even more extreme delays for certain choices that nearly doubled those averages. The result is career civil servants putting their lives on hold while they await judgment often fueled by politics. The agencies lack a permanent leader that is in a place of authority to lead long-term strategy.

Considering both as a case study, Biden has dealt with a narrowly divided Senate during his term which threw out objections to his nominee for the Department of Labor and boycotted votes nominees for the Federal Reserve in 2022. Another example is Rosie Hidalgo, who Biden picked to lead the Office on Violence Against Women and whose confirmation came 411 days after the Senate kicked back her name to the White House. She was eventually sworn in in 2023.

On June 13, a group of Senate Republicans led by JD Vance, Mike Lee, Bill Hagerty, Roger Marshall, Tommy Tuberville, and Eric Schmitt wrote a letter pledging their uniform opposition to a spate of Biden judicial nominees, under secretaries and commission members in protest of Trump’s recent conviction on 35 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Under Trump, the Senate successfully blocked his pick for the Federal Reserve Board after both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee expressed concerns with her views. Of note, Trump’s pick for assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the Department of Education, Robert King, took a more than a year to be confirmed.

One solution is to reduce the number of Senate-confirmed posts in government. Considering many career executives are forced to do the work of an appointee when there is none, there is perhaps a de facto solution that could simply be made permanent.

“To address the vacancy crisis, Congress should review whether to remove the requirement of Senate confirmation for the persistently vacant positions identified in this report,” the report suggests. “While some of these roles are best performed by an appointee of the president due to their close connection to policymaking, many could be better served by the consistent leadership of a member of the Senior Executive Service.”

It was a Friday morning in February at one of America’s biggest conservative conventions, and Donald Trump’s trusted lieutenant was on center stage, pleading with the former president’s supporters to help the now presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House.

Getting behind Trump was the only way to root out “government gangsters,” Patel said, at once referring to the title of his recently published memoir and the entrenched and shadowy cabal of “deep state” operatives he believes are threatening the country.

“That’s what it’s going to take” to win in November, he told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington. “An entire army.”

Then, draped in a green scarf emblazoned with a “K$H” logo he once sought to trademark, Patel announced his book’s upcoming film adaptation.

A trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand, Patel is poised to take on an influential role in the federal government if Trump wins a second term. Patel has a pedigree that sets him apart from other Trump advisers, and he frequently cites his experience as a public defender, federal prosecutor, top House staffer and national security official to lend credibility to his plan to go after the very intelligence community he could one day help oversee.

There is little daylight between Patel and Trump: Patel has made it clear that he is in lockstep with the former president on most national security issues, including purging government officials deemed disloyal.

Many who worked with Patel before he joined the Trump administration said he was an ambitious if not exceptional lawyer whose quick rise and far-right tilt have left them stunned.

Tom Rooney, a former Republican congressman, worked with Patel on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He described Patel as a smart and focused staffer, but said he hardly recognizes the man loudly defending the Jan. 6 rioters on far-right podcasts and radio shows.

“It’s not the same person that I knew,” Rooney said. “But Kash is still relevant and I’m not, so who’s the smart one?”

Patel, 44, declined requests for interviews and did not respond to a list of questions. He provided a statement saying he was proud of his public service and blasted The Associated Press for “taking potshots at my private life.”

Rapid rise

During Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York, Patel was part of a small group of supporters that included Republican lawmakers and Trump family members and accompanied him into court.

After a day’s testimony, Patel addressed a throng of reporters outside the courthouse, arguing Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus.” His legal career provided the basis for his assertions, he said. But Patel hadn’t always wanted to be an attorney. The son of Indian immigrants, Patel grew up in Queens, New York, and had dreamed of becoming a doctor before deciding law was a better course.

After graduating from law school at Pace University, Patel failed to get a job at the prestigious law firms he’d hoped to join. Instead, he became a public defender, and spent nearly nine years in local and federal courts in Miami before joining the Justice Department.

After working there for about three years, Patel was hired as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence led by Rep. Devin Nunes, a fierce Trump ally.

Nunes gave Patel a job running the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Patel ultimately helped author what became known as the “Nunes Memo,” a four-page report that detailed how it said the Justice Department had erred in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign volunteer. The memo’s release faced vehement opposition from the Justice Department. A subsequent inspector general report identified significant problems with FBI surveillance during the Russia investigation, but also found no evidence that the FBI had acted with partisan motives in conducting the probe.

The memo caught Trump’s attention, and soon Patel was working on the National Security Council and would later serve in increasingly influential roles. He was briefly the top adviser to the then-acting director of national intelligence and was tapped in November 2020 to be chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

Patel was interviewed as part of an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and said the former president “pre-emptively authorized” 10,000 to 20,000 troops to deploy days before the attack. A Colorado court later found that Patel was “not a credible witness” on the topic.

In November 2022, Patel appeared before a grand jury investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after being granted immunity for his testimony.

FBI, CIA

In his final months in office, Trump pushed the idea of installing Patel as the deputy director at either the FBI or CIA in an effort to strengthen the president’s control of the intelligence community.

Trump dropped those plans after CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign and Attorney General Bill Barr argued against such a move. “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Barr wrote in his memoir.

Not everyone feels that way. Michael Sherwin, former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who has known Patel since the two worked in Miami, said Patel has earned Trump’s respect and that loyalty isn’t his only asset, adding that Patel is particularly well versed in issues of national security.

“He is well respected by the Trump inner circle, and he is held in very high regard. His opinion matters,” Sherwin said.

Patel has been open about what kind of changes he’d pursue if given the chance. His various proposals include reducing the FBI’s footprint in Washington and “dramatically” limiting its authority. He hopes to curb the power of the Justice Department’s Civil Division and jettison a Pentagon office that produces classified assessments of long-term trends and risks, arguing it is just a tool of the “deep state.”

Patel has said he also intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters, and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists. During an interview with Steve Bannon in December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”

”We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

Fight with Kash

In Patel’s telling, Trump is facing off in a do-or-die battle with Democrats and bureaucrats who helped steal the election, an assertion that has been rejected by federal and local officials, dozens of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump’s own attorney general. Patel reserves particular disdain for the media, which he has called “the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen.”

Shortly after Trump left office, Patel launched Fight with Kash, an organization that funds defamation lawsuits and peddles a wide variety of merchandise, including branded socks and water bottles, sweatshirts and baseball hats, a deck of playing cards with Trump as the ace and a bumbling Joe Biden in a jester costume as the king.

The organization has since been rebranded as The Kash Foundation, a nonprofit that purports to support whistleblowers, law enforcement and education in “areas the mainstream media refuses to cover.”

Patel has said he won’t make money from the foundation and has publicly promised to be transparent about where it directs its resources. Two former FBI agents who accused the bureau of discrimination after their security clearances were revoked over their views of the Jan. 6 insurrection testified before Congress that they received money from Patel.

But the foundation has released few specifics about its finances, and Patel’s comments about his organization’s expenditures don’t appear to align with public records.

Patel said in early 2023 that his charity had distributed nearly $100,000 the previous year. The charity funded defamation lawsuits, covered the cost of sending kids to camp and provided holiday meals for the needy, Patel said. But the charity filed a report with the IRS a few months later showing it gave away only about $55,000 in 2022 to unidentified entities.

In his statement to the AP, Patel said his charity is “approaching $1 million in donations for legal funds, whistleblowers, scholarships, and support for veterans, active-duty soldiers, law enforcement, and communities affected by disasters and violent crime. ”

On a podcast in 2022, he boasted of having filed several defamation lawsuits, including one against a reporter for The New York Times. But court records show Patel did not take any necessary steps to proceed in that case after filing it in 2019 and it was dismissed two years later.

Such lawsuits suggest a broader strategy pursued by Patel, Trump and others to file often meritless lawsuits that seek to grind down political opponents and journalists, said Mark Zaid, who has represented defendants in such cases, including one funded by Patel’s charity.

“They use it to show that they’re tough and aggressive to their base to raise money,” Zaid said.

The K$H Brand

Since Trump left office, Patel has benefited from his close association with the former president.

In addition to his 2023 memoir, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel has published two children’s books that lionize Trump. “The Plot Against the King” features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald,” while Kash, a wizard called the Distinguished Discoverer, exposes a nefarious plot.

The line between his charitable work and money-making activities isn’t clear. Patel promotes “K$H” branded clothing lines for his nonprofit as well as for a company run by a close associate.

He’s also a pitchman for a variety of goods marketed to Trump supporters. One dietary supplement he’s promoting claims to be a COVID vaccine “detoxification system” made by a company whose co-founder was a defendant in a class-action lawsuit filed by people who say they were overcharged for Keto diet pills.

“Order this homerun kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax,” Patel said in a recent Truth Social post promoting the supplements.

Records show that Patel has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from his own business dealings with Trump-related entities.

He’s on the board of Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, and had a consulting contract with the company that paid him $120,000 a year.

The income from his books, clothing and endorsements is unknown, but his social media feeds show a well-traveled Patel attending high-end sporting events like the Super Bowl, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup and a UFC fight, in addition to stumping for Trump around the country.

Patel said in a 2022 podcast appearance that Truth Social was trying to incorporate QAnon, a set of conspiracy theories borne out of the idea that the government is run by a cabal of child predators, “into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.”

“He should get credit for all the things he has accomplished,” Patel said of the anonymous figurehead of the QAnon movement.

Patel has been a featured guest at rallies organized by Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn, who has been building a political movement mixing conspiracy theory with Christian nationalist ideas.

He’s also joined Trump in defending those who were charged with crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, and is listed as a producer of “And Justice For All,” a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner sung by a group of defendants. In a social media post, Patel likened the song, which was briefly #1 on iTunes, to “We Are the World,” a single written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie in 1985 to benefit Africa.

Trump’s leadership PAC has paid Patel more than $300,000 since the start of last year to serve as a national security adviser to the former president, according to campaign finance records and Truth Social’s public filings. The campaign of Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican close to Trump, paid Patel $145,000 for “fundraising consulting” in 2021, campaign finance records show.

Loyal Lieutenant

Experts say the financial benefits of Patel’s loyalty could present a potential conflict in a second Trump administration.

Douglas London, a retired CIA officer who briefly overlapped with Patel while working at the White House, expressed doubt that Patel would be willing to deliver hard truths about the consequences of certain policy decisions.

“Trump wants an echo chamber and he’ll get that in Kash Patel,” he said. “I do not see Kash Patel saying, ‘Mr. President, if you do this, this bad thing’s going to happen.’”

During his CPAC appearance, Patel left no doubt about the depth of his loyalty to Trump.

“We’re blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena,” Patel said.

After 10 minutes of praising the former president and blasting the media, intelligence community and Democrats, Patel left the stage and traded his blazer for a Revere Payments hoodie. He went to Bannon’s booth for a live episode of “War Room” to discuss the Christian merchant services platform he’s marketing.

The notoriously unkempt Bannon, a former Trump adviser who is influential in right-wing politics, joked about Patel’s informal attire.

“I’ve got to, you know, get my stuff out there,” Patel replied.

After the interview Patel hustled to the vendor floor, where he whipped off the hoodie and his handlers scrambled to remove flecks of fuzz before putting his blazer back on. Then he was ready — to pose for pictures with fans in front of a booth for a cellphone service he’s promoting.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this story.

The first lady was to announce the formation of Veterans and Military Families for Biden-Harris during stops Monday in Wilmington, North Carolina; Tampa, Florida; and Columbus, Georgia. The states have large populations of veterans and military families.

Her daylong tour is part of the Biden campaign’s broader effort to rebound from the president’s halting performance against Trump in last month’s debate, which led a handful of House Democrats and others to call on Biden to end his campaign because they no longer believe the 81-year-old president is mentally and physically capable of defeating Trump in November’s election.

Biden has insisted, during public appearances since the June 27 debate, that he is staying in the race.

His campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said the new group will work to engage and mobilize millions of veterans and military families in the U.S. to vote to reelect the president.

“Our veterans and military families are the brave and the bold, who step forward for all of us,” she said. “They deserve a commander in chief who respects their bravery and understands personally their sacrifice, not one who denigrates them for being willing to put their lives on the line for our democracy.”

Rodriguez was referring to reports that Trump, during a 2018 trip to France, referred to service members who paid the ultimate sacrifice as “suckers” and “losers.” Trump denies making the comments.

Biden’s late son Beau served in Iraq as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard, and the first lady’s father was a Navy signalman during World War II.

Biden and Trump argued during the debate over who cares the most about veterans. Biden noted that he recently visited an American military cemetery in France, the final resting place for U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I, which Trump notably skipped on that 2018 trip.

Trump asserted during the debate that the Democratic president is coddling migrants while neglecting the needs of veterans and service members, and he faulted Biden for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Biden’s campaign noted that the president had expanded benefits for veterans affected by toxic exposures, developed a strategy to reduce veteran suicide, increased support for caregivers and awarded more than $1 billion in 2023 to support homeless veterans.

Jill Biden separately leads a White House initiative named Joining Forces, which is working to help military spouses get and keep federal government jobs, make child care more affordable and accessible for military families and support those who care for veterans.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, upset that his country wouldn’t get a timeline for membership, scolded the alliance online.

“Ukraine also deserves respect,” he wrote.

In order to avoid a repeat of last year, the 2024 summit in Washington has been much more closely coordinated. Multiple European officials told Defense News that planning began months earlier than usual. And many delegations are using the same slogan: “Managing expectations.”

Now that the summit has arrived, the events around it are proving difficult to manage.

French President Emmanuel Macron, a persnickety but dogged NATO advocate in Europe, is facing political gridlock after parliamentary elections left the National Assembly, the lower house, fractured from the extreme left to the extreme right.

And while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week, he went on to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow shortly thereafter. Orban, who has previously slow-walked European aid to Ukraine, framed his visits as a peace mission but his suggestion that Ukraine order a truce before peace negotiations drew a frosty response from Kyiv.

Even more concerning for NATO is the state of its main backer. U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to contain a crisis at home after a catastrophic debate two weeks ago. Supporting the alliance has been one of Biden’s signature issues. Now, many in his own party say he shouldn’t even be the nominee — making the return of a NATO-skeptic Donald Trump to the presidency more likely.

The upshot is a split 75th birthday for NATO. By some measures, like membership and spending, the alliance is stronger than ever. And yet, many members are searching for ways to “Trump proof” its support for Kyiv while trying to protect their own security. Despite a more unified message this year, and a large package for Ukraine, European officials acknowledge the political situation is a major distraction.

“Right now the policy is support Ukraine,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official focusing on European security. “Could it change? Sure. But right now, the big affirmation is going to be NATO at 75 years and look what we’re doing to help Ukraine.”

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters on Friday that allies “will reaffirm that Ukraine’s future is in NATO, will make significant new announcements about how we’re increasing NATO’s military, political and financial support for Ukraine.”

“The Washington summit will send a strong signal to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that if he thinks he can outlast the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine, he’s dead wrong.”

Three-part package

As has been the case since Russia’s full-scale invasion over two years ago, the biggest part of this NATO summit will be backing Ukraine.

Heading into the meetings, officials and analysts outlined a three-part package.

The first piece will be equipment, likely including urgently needed air defense batteries and interceptors for Kyiv.

NATO will also take a larger role in the process. To this point in the war, the U.S. has led the effort, with a monthly meeting convened by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. This Ukraine Defense Contact Group has helped raise and direct around $100 billion in aid.

The alliance is now taking on some of those tasks. In June, NATO announced a command of 700 personnel in Germany that would also help steer aid to Ukraine moving forward. Speaking with reporters on the condition of anonymity before the summit, a European official predicted this group would take on more authority over time.

“We are crossing that line,” the official said. “We are giving NATO greater role in terms of assistance to Ukraine.”

Biden will host an event at the summit with Zelenskyy and nearly two dozen allies and partners who have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.

A final part of the package is what the final communique will say about membership for Ukraine. The delegations are still haggling over how to word it — a “bridge,” an “irreversible” path or some combination of the two. Whatever the language, the same European official said it needs to be firmer than the conditional phrasing of the Vilnius communique.

To many in Ukraine, though, this back and forth misses the point.

“We know we will probably not get an invitation to joint NATO,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Committee on Foreign Policy Committee in Ukraine’s parliament. “The question is what we will get instead.”

Parsing the words in the communique when Ukraine has known membership isn’t on the table ignores more important questions: like the alliance’s readiness and Russia’s threat beyond Ukraine, argued Maksym Skrypchenko, who leads the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a think tank in Kyiv.

“People [in Ukraine] are very frustrated with NATO,” he said. “They feel like NATO isn’t working and Russia can invade the Baltic states and nothing will happen.”

‘Done this before’

Despite that mood, there are signs that the Washington summit is more unified than last year’s.

In a post last week, Zelenskyy predicted “there are good things to come” on air defense, membership and security agreements.

NATO will also have a clutch of good news to celebrate. It’s hit a record number of members spending at least 2% of GDP on defense — expected to hit 23 this year compared to only three a decade ago. It has a new member, with Sweden ending a long accession process in March. And there’s a new secretary general coming, now that former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earned enough support in June.

That said, the political malaise surrounding the summit will make the work harder, multiple analysts and officials said. Asked whether the optics of a weakened American and French president would distract from the real policy discussions, another European official was terse.

“Yes,” the official said.

Hence, despite the carefully coordinated messaging, many members of the alliance will arrive in Washington looking for reassurance, or even trying to hedge against the whiplash of a second Trump term by meeting with his campaign or conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.

Others are skeptical such an approach could work.

“I find this notion of future-proofing or even Trump-proofing the alliance, to be frank, a little bit laughable,” John Deni, a former adviser to American military leaders in Europe, said on a press call hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Deni’s argument was two-fold.

One, there is no country in NATO with the ability to replace a more distant United States, economically or militarily.

And two, NATO has been through these political transitions in the past, including with American leaders thought to be insufficiently committed to Europe.

Every expert on the call with Deni argued that second point: An alliance doesn’t last 75 years without learning how to survive.

“What I say to Europeans all the time is stop freaking out about Trump,” said Rachel Rizzo, an expert at the Atlantic Council. “You’ve done this before.”

Austin announced the decision in a statement Monday morning, calling Chollet “one of the most distinguished, far-sighted, and skillful national-security practitioners of his generation.”

The decision comes nearly two weeks after Austin’s longtime Chief of Staff Kelly Magsamen said she would leave her post in late June, after three and a half years in the role. It also puts to rest the long saga of Chollet’s nomination to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop, afflicted by personnel turnover since its former leader Colin Kahl left last summer.

Shortly after Kahl left, the White House submitted Chollet’s name to fill the role. But the confirmation stalled in the Senate, in large part due to Republican objections over his role in the Afghanistan pullout in 2021.

Those frustrations crescendoed last September in a contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Since then there has been no progress in actually confirming Chollet. The decision to move him to the chief of staff role may also have to do with the calendar. There’s only seven months until January, when there could be a turnover in administrations depending on November’s election

Amanda Dory, a longtime Pentagon hand, is now serving as undersecretary of defense for policy on an acting basis.

Magsamen’s deputy, Caroline Zier, was initially set to take over the chief of staff role. Chollet, who has served in senior positions within the Pentagon before, will start in July.

Jackson has served in the role for only eight months, but had previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for force readiness at the Pentagon since the start of President Joe Biden’s presidency. The chief of staff role at VA serves as the top advisor to the secretary and deputy secretary.

In a statement, Jackson said she is stepping down to spend more time with her family.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to serve alongside the dedicated women and men in the Department of Veterans Affairs in our mission of ensuring veterans and their families, caregivers, and survivors get the care and benefits they have earned and so richly deserve,” the statement said.

Her last day as the VA chief of staff will be July 13. VA officials have not yet announced a temporary or permanent successor.

Jackson served eight years as a naval reserve officer, holding assignments in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Naval Special Warfare, and the Chief of Naval Operations’ Strategic Studies Group.

Her appointment to the senior VA post last fall meant the department had its six top department leadership jobs all filled for the first time since 2014.

That lasted for only seven months. Jackson’s departure comes almost one month after Under Secretary of Memorial Affairs Matthew Quinn stepped down from his role in the department. Ronald Walters has been serving as acting under secretary since Quinn’s exit.

Unlike the under secretary role, which requires Senate confirmation, the chief of staff post can be filled without prior approval from Congress.

Jackson’s predecessor, Tanya Bradsher, left the role to become VA Deputy Secretary.

The report indicated that 84% of respondents, who were mostly software contractors, failed to meet cybersecurity standards by instituting a Software Bills of Materials, which were required in May 2021 via Executive Order 14028. According to the survey, lack of compliance can be attributed to budget and staff restrictions, as well as not enough awareness of what’s required.

SBOMs are an inventory of software components and is seen as the “key building block” in software security and supply chain risk management.

“These findings demonstrate that, in many cases, the federal government’s efforts to prevent cyber infiltration have yet to translate into real-world action,” according to the report.

CISA did not immediately return a Federal Times request for comment.

These required self-attestation forms, entitled Software Development Attestation Form and are part of the presidential order, are a way for software producers that sell to the federal government to affirm they are following guidelines to ensure their networks are secure. The directive requires these service providers to share with the federal government any cyber incidents and threat information that could impact the federal government’s IT systems. The forms were due June 11, 2024, according to a White House memorandum.

The federal government is pushing the need for a secure software supply chain as incidents in the past exemplify its necessity. For example, in 2020 a malicious code was added into SolarWinds software that resulted in and opening into the digital infrastructure of the federal agencies and large corporations being compromised, according to a 2022 White House briefing.

“This incident was one of a string of cyber intrusions and significant software vulnerabilities over the last two years that have threatened the delivery of Government services to the public, as well as the integrity of vast amounts of personal information and business data that is managed by the private sector,” according to the briefing.

According to the survey, 65% of respondents said their companies were unaware of EO 14028. Of the companies that were aware of the order, roughly half said they’re not knowledgeable on its specific requirements.

“Executive Order 14028 urges organizations working with government agencies to modernize their security protocols, including generating SBOMs and attestation to secure development practices, which is viewed as a major leap forward for national cybersecurity,” Katie Norton, the research manager of DevSecOps and software supply chain security at IDC, said in the release. “However, most organizations are unaware of their exposure and are inadequately protected, leaving them prone to supply chain attacks.”

Norton said IDC research revealed that 23% of those surveyed were victims of a software supply chain attack, which is a 241% increase from the year before and exemplifies the need for an increase in awareness on this issue among these professionals.

The survey collected information from over 100 security professionals. It compiled data that showcases 45% of respondents list budget limitations and 36% list staffing resource issues for slow response time in securing their companies’ software supply chains.

“The efforts of the federal government to safeguard our software supply chain are laudable — but it’s clear that awareness has fallen short,” CEO and co-founder of Lineaje Javed Hasan said in the release. “While businesses can’t build without open-source software, they also can’t survive long-term if that same open-source software is riddled with security vulnerabilities. Software vendors and cybersecurity professionals need to educate themselves and take immediate action on the upcoming compliance deadlines to protect their organizations and contribute to enhancing the nation’s overall cybersecurity posture.”

While the executive order doesn’t carry the force of law, their compliance is incentivized. For example, there are benefits to adhering to the federal government’s rules if companies wish to do business with them.

Agencies are in the process of ironing out a rule that would require software companies to comply with the executive order, according to the latest regulatory update from the Department of Defense.