Feinberg—Co-Founder, Co-CEO & Chief Investment Officer of Cerberus Capital Management—served as Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board during the first Trump Administration
WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, today introduced Stephen (Steve) A. Feinberg, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Deputy Secretary of Defense, at the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.
Feinberg previously was co-founder, co-CEO, and chief investment officer of Cerberus Capital Management, a global investment firm. He also chaired President Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 2018 to 2021.
When Senator Hagerty served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan in the first Trump Administration, he worked closely with Feinberg to prevent Hanjin Shipyard—now Agila Subic Shipyard—at Subic Bay in the Philippines from falling into Communist China’s control.
Remarks as prepared for delivery:
Chairman Wicker and Ranking Member Reed, thank you for holding this important nominations hearing today.
It is my privilege to introduce my good friend, Steve Feinberg—President Trump’s nominee to be the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
During the first Trump Administration, from 2018 to 2021, Steve chaired the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, where he brought a fresh perspective and provided expert advice on a range of challenges to U.S. national security.
Before his nomination, Steve was co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Cerberus Capital Management—a global investment firm that he co-founded in 1992 and that today manages some $68 billion in assets.
At Cerberus, Steve spent 34 years investing in, fixing, and operating a variety of businesses, including those related to national defense and the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Steve is a Patriot with a great heart—one of the many things that sets Steve apart is his strategic vision and his willingness and desire to invest in ways that not only create and grow value for his investors, but also advance U.S. national security interests.
Here, I want to quickly share a powerful story based on my own personal experience with Steve’s leadership.
When I served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan, I discovered that two Chinese firms were attempting to acquire the bankrupt Hanjin Shipyard at Subic Bay in the Philippines.
Subic Bay had previously served as a U.S. Naval base with a deep-water shipyard that is strategically located on the South China Sea.
For various reasons, the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and other parts of the U.S. government were not in a position to engage and solve this problem.
So I engaged with top officials in the Trump Administration, and the governments of Japan and the Philippines, as well as with top actors in the private sector—in specific, with Steve Feinberg and Cerberus.
Working together, we assembled an ad hoc public-private solution to this problem and thwarted China’s efforts to acquire the port.
Thanks to leadership from the Trump Administration and Steve Feinberg and his team, we succeeded.
Today, Hanjin Shipyard is known as Agila Subic Shipyard and is owned by American investors.
As a result, U.S. and Allied firms have a joint presence there now—for example, HD Hyundai, a South Korean firm, will build and maintain vessels at the shipyard, and SubCom, a U.S.-based undersea cable firm, is advancing projects in the region from there.
The U.S. military and the Armed Forces of the Philippines also have a significant presence there.
If Steve and his team had not stepped up to solve this problem, the Chinese Communist Party today would likely possess a vital piece of strategic infrastructure in the South China Sea—and the threats to the security of the United States and our partners would be enormous.
At Cerberus, Steve also worked hard on another issue that I dealt with firsthand as U.S. Ambassador to Japan: that is, helping the United States and our partners counter China’s threat in 5G telecommunications by investing in commercial alternatives to Huawei and other Chinese telecoms companies.
Here again, Steve recognized a strategic challenge to the United States and has sought to counter and minimize the influence and access that China could gain from control over spectrum and telecommunications infrastructure.
On that note, I want to commend the Committee for its strong support for the Defense Department’s efforts to accelerate adoption of 5G and Open RAN technologies in order to provide strategic advantages to the warfighter—including by directing the Pentagon to establish a “Secretary of Defense 5G Cross Functional Team” to accomplish this objective.
We could not have addressed these problems without Steve Feinberg—an outsider with a fresh perspective who, at the same time, knows how to work on the inside while bringing innovation and ingenuity to the table.
Steve, if confirmed, will do an outstanding job as the Pentagon’s second highest-ranking civilian official.
Steve understands the mission.
He will leverage his leadership, his strategic thinking, his deep knowledge, his decades of experience, his vast professional network, his willingness to listen and learn, and his decisiveness to improve the Defense Department.
Just as he did at Cerberus for the last 34 years, Steve will work his heart out—every day—at the Defense Department.
He will ensure that the building, its management, its operations, and its programs run better and more efficiently.
And he’ll focus on the Department’s goal of providing decisive strategic, operational, and tactical advantages to the warfighter.
Steve Feinberg is the right man for this job—I look forward to his testimony today and to working with my colleagues to advance his nomination as quickly as possible.
###