Kathleen Hicks
Golden Defense
As the 35th deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks is the Department of Defense’s No.2 official responsible for executing on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s priorities and overseeing day-to-day operations across the Pentagon, including budget activities. Since coming into office in 2021, Hicks has made the modernization and adoption of emerging tech a major focus for the DOD. Specifically, she’s played a lead role in standing up the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office and bringing to life the department’s Replicator initiative, which is meant to accelerate programs and field thousands of “attritable autonomous” systems across multiple domains by August 2025, to help the U.S. armed forces counter China’s military buildup.
