PENTAGON — President Donald Trump’s nominee for deputy secretary of defense is warning that China’s military is resolute on surpassing the United States and is calling for a fix to “significant” military shortages at a time when administration leaders are trying to make big budget cuts.
“China is incredibly determined, they feel a great sense of urgency, and they’ll be fully dedicated to becoming the strongest nation in the world and having dominance over the United States,” Steve Feinberg told members of the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday.
Feinberg, a businessman and investor, said the U.S. military shortages include “shipbuilding, nuclear modernization, aircraft development, cyber defense, hypersonics, counter space, defending our satellites [and] counter drones.”
“We really need to plug these shortages, focus on our priorities, get rid of legacy programs, be very disciplined, while at the same time focusing on the economics. If we do that, given America’s great innovative capability, entrepreneurship, we will defeat China. If we don’t, our very national security is at risk,” Feinberg said.
The hearing comes as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has called on the department to cut 8% — roughly $50 billion — to reinvest in priorities aligned with a “more lethal fighting force.”
Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Tuesday pushed back against the move saying, “Slashing the defense budget will not create efficiency in our military. It will cripple it.”
The concern about cuts to the military has echoed on both sides of the aisle.
Republican committee Chairman Roger Wicker told the Breaking Defense news organization last month that he hoped to increase defense spending by as much as $200 billion in coming years.
And Republican Senator Dan Sullivan on Tuesday called for prioritizing solutions to shipbuilding to counter threats from China and others.
“We’re in the worst crisis in shipbuilding in over 40 years. The Chinese are building a giant navy. It’s already bigger than ours,” he said.
China’s military has about 370 warships, according to the Pentagon’s latest China Military Power Report, while the U.S. military has about 300.
Feinberg acknowledged that the shipbuilding shortage is “a tough problem” for the military.
“Our supply chain is definitely weak. Our workforce needs to be improved. But a big piece of improving our supply chain is working more closely with our private sector. We have companies that can get at where our needs are, where our shortages are, and we need to work more closely with them. We need people inside of government that understand their issues,” Feinberg said.
Several Democrats on the committee were critical of interference at the Pentagon by the Department of Government Efficiency, saying it could create a major vulnerability should its members not handle data more carefully.
“They [DOGE] just sent an unclassified email with CIA recent hire names in an unclassified space. As a former CIA officer, you just blew the cover of someone who was going to risk their life abroad to protect our country,” said Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin.
“Do you know how appetizing it is for our adversaries to have this data? … It is quite literally an issue of safety and security,” she added.
Democrats also raised concern about plans to let go more than 5,000 Pentagon civilian employees this week, while Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin countered that cutting 5,000 jobs amounted to less than 0.5% of the workforce.
“Our national debt is now costing us more to just pay interest than we spend on our military. That’s a huge national security risk,” he said. “And so, at what point do we start making cuts?”
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