Today President Barack Obama nominated Robert Work, CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), to be the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Here is a statement from CNAS. It says that Work will remain as CEO of the national security-oriented think tank until he is confirmed by the Senate. Upon confirmation, Michele Flournoy will serve as Interim CEO until the board at CNAS selects a successor.
Last month, Work and CNAS colleague Shawn Brimley released a report titled "20YY: Preparing for War in the Robotic Age." Here is a summary of that report. Here is what InformationWeek said about that report.
Chuck Hagel apparently has had problems filling the No. 2 Pentagon slot. He reportedly gauged the interest of Michele Flournoy, Kurt Campell (who co-founded CNAS with Michele Flournoy) and Kathleen Hicks of CSIS. They all rejected the position.
CNAS, which has extremely close ties to the Obama Administration, acts both as a talent pool for DoD and as a landing pad for former DoD officials.
If the Brookings Institution is the Shadow Fed, and Mini-CIA, CNAS is the DoD-in-waiting.
In the just-released University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, CNAS was rated as the 14th best think tank in the United States.