The White House made the unusual move of reaching out Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for advice on who should serve as the next NASA administrator, causing experts to worry about military influence on the civilian space agency.
At a news conference Thursday, President Donald Trump said that “Gen. Caine is going to be picking somebody” for the top role in NASA, which is separate from the Defense Department, and that somebody “will be checking them out.” It was unclear who Trump was referring to in regards to checking candidates, or if any other military officials were consulted.
On Friday, a White House official went further, telling Military.com that Trump reached out to Caine because he “wants to ensure his next nominee is aligned with his America First vision, and shares his desire to help lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars.”
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The revelation that Caine was asked for recommendations about the next head of NASA — a civilian agency with a peaceful mission — is unusual and, according to experts, an alarming signal that the Trump administration may be looking to blur the concept of scientific space exploration with the growing arms race and military interests in space.
Furthermore, the White House statement also serves to further politicize Caine and the otherwise apolitical position of the military by suggesting that the four-star general would be a good arbiter of who can carry out Trump’s political “America First” agenda.
Caine himself was an unusual pick by Trump that raised eyebrows because he had retired from military service and did not meet the statutory requirements for being the Joint Chiefs chairman, requiring a presidential waiver.
Meanwhile, outside experts on the space agency were baffled and concerned by the move.
“The [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] has no interaction or reporting relationship with the NASA administrator,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an expert on defense policy. “And as far as I know, he has no space exploration expertise to contribute.”
Caine, who retired as a lieutenant general, was an F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot and held numerous National Guard assignments throughout a three-decade career. Before retiring, he served as the associate director for military affairs at the CIA.
Grace Bartlinski, a NASA spokesperson, told Military.com that the agency “does not choose its own administrator or dictate the process by which one is chosen” and deferred comment to the White House.
One of Trump’s proudest achievements from his first term was signing the National Defense Authorization Act in 2019 that created the Space Force, a point he makes known often in public forums. However, despite its name, the Space Force doesn’t send troops into space. Instead, it is largely tasked with defending the U.S. from threats from outside the atmosphere.
Though the Department of Defense and NASA do have a relationship, including the services loaning troops as astronauts, they have vastly different missions, with NASA’s mandate being focused squarely on scientific exploration and manned spaceflight.
The distinction goes back decades, and NASA’s peaceful mission allowed it to be one of the few areas of cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1975, less than three years after the last American walked on the moon, NASA carried out the first joint mission with the Soviets known as Apollo-Soyuz.
That cooperation would then grow to the first U.S. astronaut living aboard the Russian space station Mir, a precursor to today’s International Space Station, in the early months of 1995. After the U.S. retired the space shuttle in 2011, NASA astronauts relied on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get into space.
Any appearance of the Trump administration blurring those lines — such as leaning on the military to pick a NASA leader — is concerning to space experts.
Victoria Samson, the chief director of space security and stability at the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, said she didn’t “know why you would have a military officer talking about who would be best placed to be in charge of a civil space agency.”
“I mean, there’s separation of church and state between military space and civil space, that’s pretty clear, right? And that’s the whole point,” Samson added.
Trump first named Jared Isaacman, a billionaire business executive and commercial astronaut, as his nominee to lead NASA, but withdrew his nomination late last month after a “thorough review of prior associations,” the president said on social media.
Isaacman would go on to tell The All In podcast that he thought he lost out on the job because of his ties with Elon Musk, who also recently left the Trump administration, saying that there wasn’t “much of a coincidence” between the departure and his name being pulled from consideration.
One name reported as a potential choice to replace Isaacman is retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, Reuters reported. His last role was as head of Air Education and Training Command at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph in Texas. He was, notably, a fierce advocate of creating the Space Force.
Caine did not respond to a query from Military.com on whether he recommended Kwast.
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