The Indian American national security specialist’s new position will involve integrating and optimising artificial intelligence capabilities throughout the department.
This week, Radha Iyengar Plumb, a national security specialist, took the oath of office as the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer. Her role “should prove key to the implementation of U.S. policies for autonomous weapon systems and autonomous systems in the kill chain,” according to a press release from the department.
The Indian American’s new position will involve accelerating the department’s adoption of data and analytics as well as integrating and optimising artificial intelligence capabilities across the DoD.
In his most recent role, Iyengar Plumb was the Acquisition She “built out the U.S. security industrial base and supply chain” in her role, according to the DoD. and Sustainment Deputy Under Secretary of Defence.
She co-wrote a working paper in October 2010 that connected the violence committed by insurgents after civilian casualties in Afghanistan. “We find strong evidence in Afghanistan that local exposure to civilian casualties caused by international forces over time leads to increased insurgent violence—a phenomenon we refer to as the ‘revenge’ effect,” the paper stated. There was, however, no proof of a comparable response to civilian deaths in Iraq. “Reducing civilian casualties is not necessarily in conflict with the objective of protecting the lives of international forces,” the paper concluded.
She “described China’s rapid fusion of AI and military technology as a worrisome development, with the pacing challenge presented furthering China’s state interests in line with autocratic values,” the Department of Defence noted, during an open discussion with the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in September 2023. “A hard counter to these efforts, with solutions derived from the rapid scaling of information technologies, aided by government programmes to reduce sticking points in development,” the DoD continued as she extolled the virtues of the American economic system.
Her White House bio states that she led “their cross-functional teams on business analytics, data science, and technical research” as director of Research and Insights for Trust & Safety at Google prior to being appointed chief of staff. The bio stated, “She also served as Facebook’s Global Head of Policy Analysis, where she focused on critical international security issues and high risk/high harm safety.”
Prior to this, she worked as a Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation, where she improved the Department of Defense’s measurement and assessment of readiness and security initiatives. She also held several high-level national security staff positions at the White House National Security Council, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defence.
She completed her postdoctoral studies at Harvard and began her career as an assistant professor at the London School of Economics. She holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. and M.S. in Economics from Princeton University.
John F. Plumb, the assistant secretary of defence for space policy, is her husband. He was The Aerospace Corporation’s chief of government relations before. In 2016, he unsuccessfully ran as the Democratic Party candidate for the 23rd congressional district in New York.
