Gen. Joshua Rudd confirmed as head of NSA, Cyber Command

Defence affairs - Def-Geopolitics on X

Gen. Joshua M. Rudd was confirmed Tuesday as the next head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, ending nearly one year of leadership limbo at the nation’s largest spy agency and the military’s offensive cyber organization.

Rudd, a former Delta Force commander, was confirmed by the Senate in a 71-29 vote. The confirmation elevates him to a four-star general, and he is expected to take up his position soon.

Rudd will assume command over an intelligence agency shaken by the abrupt firing of its director, Gen. Timothy Haugh, and Deputy Director Wendy Noble by President Donald Trump in April. The president’s move drew sharp bipartisan rebukes as an unjustified political move engineered by the far-right activist Laura Loomer.

Rudd will also serve in a “dual hat” role as head of U.S. Cyber Command, which conducts offensive and defensive cyber operations.

Cybercom operators helped enable the Jan. 3 military raid that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro by triggering temporary power cuts and, along with Space Command, helped disrupt communications and sensor networks in the first hours of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran.

For the past year and a half, Rudd has served as deputy head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which is the largest of the six combatant commands by geography and is largely focused on countering the Chinese military’s aggressive push for regional dominance.

“General Rudd is a war hero with a lifetime of service to our nation,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “He is the right choice to lead the protection of our nation from cyberattacks by Iran, Russia and China.”

Rudd rose from an Army quartermaster focused on logistics to head the elite Delta Force — the clandestine unit that, along with SEAL Team 6, executes the military’s highest-stakes missions. He has overseen all Special Operations troops assigned to the Pacific and served in numerous combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But his relative lack of leadership experience in cyber operations and signals intelligence has drawn scrutiny from some Democratic senators. At a confirmation hearing in January, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) asked him to commit to not surveilling U.S. citizens without a judicial warrant. Rudd responded that he respected Americans’ civil liberties and pledged to follow the law if confirmed, but declined to explicitly oppose the practice.

“That, respectfully though, doesn’t get close to what I’m talking about,” Wyden said at the time.

On the Senate floor on Monday, Wyden said that while he respected Rudd’s years of military experience, he did not view him as qualified to serve in the dual positions. Wyden voted not to confirm.

While Rudd was confirmed by a narrower margin than most nominees to his position — who usually advance on a voice vote — other Democrats said they were satisfied by his answers during his confirmation process. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), a member of the Armed Services Committee, asked at that committee’s confirmation hearing whether he would pledge not to use the agency’s tools for domestic surveillance.