Where's Bob Kadlec?
When will this Trump nominee to the Defense Department be confirmed into office?
I’ve mentioned in the past that I personally know Dr. Robert (Bob) Kadlec, the former DHHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) who worked in the first Trump administration. We’re not drinking buddies, I haven’t seen him in some time (maybe 2010?), but we knew each other, and I think we had some respect for each other’s passion to work in this crazy business of unconventional weapons. He had a lead role in Operation Warp Speed in his former position, in that he argued for a fast-tracked national vaccine program and was the lead for DHHS in that program.
He was nominated to fill the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical and Biological Defense Policy (ASD[ND-CBD]), formerly known as the ASD for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs (ASD[NCB]) way back in early February 2025. While his nomination has been referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee, there is no indication of a hearing on the calendar to consider his nomination in the near future. Now, there are certainly other nominations that have not gotten onto the calendar, notably the Director for Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller). But Kadlec is certainly the oldest nomination who has not gotten an appointment to talk to the SASC.
Certainly these things can take time. According to The Google, the average time from nomination to confirmation for the first Trump administration was 161 days. For the Biden administration, it was 193 days. We are more than 230 days into the second Trump administration, and the pace of confirmations is pretty similar to those two terms of office. As a member of the male white corporate community, Kadlec fits the profile of around 90 percent of Trump’s confirmed appointees, so it’s difficult to understand what the holdup is. He’s making the rounds, as evidenced by this photo with Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), whose state hosts the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha. Not only is she on the SASC, she’s a key supporter of the U.S. nuclear enterprise, an area within which the future ASD(ND-CBD) would be working.
For what it’s worth, Senator, the concept of putting deterrence policy under defense acquisition and not remain under defense policy really ranks up there with “worst ideas ever” on the list of defense reform issues.1 I’m trying to understand why he hasn’t come up for a SASC hearing yet, given the alleged importance of modernizing the DoD nuclear enterprise; that is, when the Trump administration isn’t pulling R&D funds from the Sentinel program to pay for refitting a “free” Qatari jet. You know, priorities and all. The good news (relatively speaking) is that the nuclear hawks don’t have to worry about whom within the defense acquisition office is working the U.S. nuclear modernization. It appears that Dr. Robert Soofer is the acting Principal Deputy Assistant of Defense for ND-CBP, the number two position under the ASD. Soofer was the former Deputy Assistant of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy in the defense policy shop during the first Trump administration and used to work for Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who was perhaps the most hawkish senator on nuclear policy and modernization in recent times. Soofer has very clear and nuanced arguments for nuclear deterrence and national missile defense.2
It used to be thought, back in the day, that good practice would put a nuclear policy expert in the ASD position (originally the ASD for Atomic Energy), because people thought that nukes were kind of a big deal. The ASD would allow the DASD for CB Defense to work the relatively bland portfolio for overseeing the services’ R&D for CB defense gear and not really worry about the small potatoes stuff. About 16 years ago, this changed when the Obama administration put a man who worked the State Department’s arm control efforts relating to biological weapons into the office and put the nuke expert into the PD position.3 I don’t think we’ve ever really recovered from that, and seeing Bob Kadlec’s name put up for this position seems to confirm this fear. Again, I like Bob on general principles. He’s very personable and has a sharp intellect, but he has no background in nuclear deterrence or nuclear modernization. Soofer, though, is a known quantity to the U.S. nuclear enterprise and will certainly be focused on nuclear issues, for better or for worse.4
But back to Kadlec. His name has come up lately in the news, not with respect to his upcoming appointment, but rather due to his authoring a report on COVID-19 origins under the auspices of the Scowcroft Institute. This report was released in July with little fanfare, probably because the battlelines on whether COVID-19 pandemic was the result of a natural zoonotic spillover or a lab-leak are pretty hardened, and no one is really seeing any new data that will change their mind. This is certainly not a new opinion by Kadlec. From the report’s executive summary:
This update draws from findings from several published unclassified reports and additional new open-source evidence to address two outstanding issues concerning the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The first is the origin of the virus and the outbreak: Was SARS-CoV-2 a product of natural recombination and zoonotic spillover or possible lab manipulation? Was the pandemic the result of transmission from an infected animal host or the result of a research-related incident? The second is the possible nature of the research being conducted in Wuhan that may have resulted in a research-related incident: Could that research be part of a military biological weapons program as concluded by the House Intelligence Committee? Determining the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 pandemic and what relationship, if any, it may have with military biological research is essential for public health and national security. Regardless, there remains an imperative to prepare for and prevent the inevitable next pandemic.
There’s a lot of science in this report. I’m not a medical professional; I am not the one to ask about the validity of this information. A lot of this debate goes to the question of whether U.S. funding of “gain-of-function” research was responsible for the COVID-19 breakout in China and the need for better biosecurity regulations to limit gain-of-function research. The question of COVID-19’s origin has been argued back and forth since 2020, with the medical research community heatedly insisting that we need to know the origin of the virus so as to better prepare for and reduce the future risk of a pandemic. I tend to agree with the views in this 2023 article.
Of the three possibilities — natural, accidental, or deliberate — the most scientific evidence yet identified supports natural emergence. More than half of the earliest Covid-19 cases were connected to the Huanan market, and epidemiologic mapping revealed that the concentration of cases was centered there. In January 2020, Chinese officials cleared the market without testing live animals, but positive environmental samples, including those from an animal cage and a hair-and-feather–removal machine, indicated the presence of both SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-susceptible animals. Recently released findings included raccoon dog DNA, pointing to a possible SARS-CoV-2 progenitor. Samples from early cases in humans also contained two different SARS-CoV-2 lineages. Although only one lineage spread globally, the existence of multiple lineages suggests that a SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in animals may have led to multiple spillover events.
Proponents of the accidental laboratory leak theory stress the geographic location of the WIV in the city where the pandemic began. They point to the presence of the bat coronavirus RaTG13 strain at the laboratory, arguing that genetic manipulations such as gain-of-function (GOF) research may have produced SARS-CoV-2. Most scientists refute this theory because there is considerable evolutionary distance between the two viruses. However, the possibility that the laboratory held a different progenitor strain to SARS-CoV-2 that led to a laboratory leak cannot be unequivocally ruled out.
China’s obfuscation may mean that we will never have certainty about the origins of the greatest pandemic in more than a century. After all the world has suffered in loss of life, economic hardship, and exacerbated health disparities, there is intrinsic value in knowing the cause. An objectively determined body of scientific facts cannot fully defuse the political rhetoric surrounding the origins investigation, but the search must continue.
My view, which again doesn’t amount to much against these medical experts, is that IT DOESN’T MATTER how the pandemic started. China is never going to publicly provide data that supports one way or the other, and the U.S. government will never be able to make the case without that evidence. I am not endorsing the “both sides have points” argument, but we need to move on. What we ought to be focused on is the unquestionably weak and poorly regulated U.S. health care that is certainly not in the top ten of anyone’s list of well-developed national public health systems. Whether COVID-19 was a lab leak or a natural release, the U.S. government ought to recognize the importance of both improving laboratory biosecurity regulations and improving the early warning of global disease outbreaks. We’re not seeing any visible progress on those two points.5
COVID-19 was certainly NOT a Chinese biological weapon, and for Kadlec to suggest that it might be is just ridiculous. It’s political fodder for a Republican Congress and administration that wants to focus the public’s attention on an external enemy instead of on the poor state of the U.S. public health system. This is not the first time that people have questioned whether COVID might be a bioweapon, and that’s why the U.S. National Intelligence Council publicly stated that “The IC assesses China did not develop SARS-CoV-2 as a biological weapon.” There is no new information in Kadlec’s report to change this position. Do we need to worry as to whether China has a BW program? Sure. The State Department says we have to worry about China’s commitment to the BWC. At the same time, China is way ahead of the United States in terms of biotechnology and health services, and it’s just as likely that U.S. critics just want to take potshots at China’s deep research portfolio on developing medical countermeasures for natural disease outbreaks.
So why did Kadlec release this report, which does nothing to clarify the issue and just confirms the worst and poorly justified statements of the Republican-led Congress on its China hunt? I honestly don’t know. Best case, he was there during the pandemic outbreak, maybe he really believes this stuff, despite the overwhelming majority of expert views supporting a natural zoonotic spill. Worst case, he’s trying to demonstrate his bona fides to be an upstanding member of the Trump-2 circle of sycophants so as to speed up his nomination hearing and to eventually be a critical leader in defense policy and acquisition. Best of luck, Bob, but I would not want to be in your position for all of the fame and fortune that you may think it will bring. But if you do get there, why not take a look at that out-of-control DoD CB Defense Program and get its affairs into order? That’s something that you’re eminently qualified to do.
Well, maybe not as bad as renaming the Department of Defense as the “Department of War.” But I digress.
I don’t agree with Soofer’s views, but he does have a deep understanding of the subject.
The Wiki has a nice write-up on the history of this office and its officeholders. Surprisingly, both Obama and Biden selected bio experts to run the office responsible for coordinating DoD and DOE nuclear weapons development. In Trump’s first term, he put a nuke guy in charge, but he had to leave under an ethical cloud. Now in Trump’s second term, he’s reverting to the practice of putting a bio guy in charge of nuke deterrence. I don’t pretend to understand the politics. Seems contradictory to good management practices.
Depends on your point of view. Soofer’s biography notes that he was a “principal architect” of the Trump 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which — while similar to the Obama nuclear policy — was considerably more hawkish about the potential use of nuclear weapons in support of national security interests. It’s still a really bad idea to have deterrence policy in an acquisition shop, but Soofer does know his way around this topic.
Admittedly, RFK Jr’s systematic destruction of the Dept of Health and Human Services will make it difficult to prepare for and respond to the next pandemic. And there will be a future pandemic. We all know this to be true, but politicians are going to play stupid games and we’re all going to pay the price.
It’s a mystery! Thanks for your analysis. But Bob’s report is full of falsehoods in addition to that conclusion. If you run it through ChatGPT it points out many of them.