White House cyber director’s office set for more power under Trump, experts say

The Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) is poised to become a stronger force in the second Trump administration and will finally operate as the executive branch cybersecurity policy lead that Congress envisioned when establishing it in 2021, experts say.

President Donald Trump’s selection of Sean Cairncross to lead the office signals that the administration plans for ONCD to run point on cyber policy across the executive branch during Trump 2.0, they said. Cairncross is widely expected to win Senate confirmation.

Cairncross served as a deputy assistant to the president and senior adviser to the White House chief of staff in the first Trump administration, where he “provided counsel on a variety of issues including matters related to national security,” according to an official bio posted online.

He also worked closely with the president’s niece, Lara Trump, when she was leading the Republican National Committee.

While he has no experience as a cybersecurity leader, Cairncross’s close personal ties to the president are considered a significant asset for the office, which until now has been overshadowed by the National Security Council (NSC).

The Biden administration cycled through three people at the helm of ONCD. The most recent director, Harry Coker, came to the position as a career National Security Agency and CIA official, and did not have a personal relationship with the president.

The NSC deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, Anne Neuberger, essentially ran cyber policy for the Biden administration. Neuberger left before Inauguration Day, and Trump eliminated the position.

Cairncross is “politically connected, so that suggests he's got the clout to actually run things — you don't appoint a politically powerful person if you intend to sideline the post,” said Jim Lewis, a longtime Washington cyber insider. 

“Think of it as ONCD at the pinnacle — they’ll guide both sides as the point,” Lewis said. “You have the NSC doing foreign policy and offensive cyber and CISA [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] doing domestic and defensive.”

The choices of Alexei Bulazel, Emily Goldman and JD Work to staff the NSC’s cyber office underscore that the Trump administration intends to ramp up offensive cyber operations, Lewis said. National security adviser Michael Waltz is a proponent of being more aggressive against adversaries in cyberspace.

“I expect to see more offense because the national security adviser says that's their goal,” said Mark Montgomery, who played a significant role in promoting the creation of the ONCD as executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. “I never heard Jake Sullivan say that.” Sullivan was Biden’s national security adviser.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Multiple congressional offices also did not respond to requests for comment, or declined to speculate about ONCD’s path forward.

ONCD as ‘quarterback’

When establishing the office, Congress signaled that it intended ONCD to be the lead cyber entity in the executive branch by housing it inside the White House complex and requiring its leader to be Senate-confirmed. 

The office was designed to communicate the president’s cybersecurity priorities to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and all other federal agencies handling cyber risk management or defending critical infrastructure. ONCD leadership also was expected to brief Congress on how the government combats cyberthreats.

ONCD will spend a lot of time eliminating a hodgepodge of rules governing private industry, said Brian Harrell, who served as assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.

The office’s key initiative will be to remove “bad policy and regulation,” Harrell said. “Like last time, more regulation will be dismantled than introduced — and this is a good thing.”

Harrell said that the system as a whole will be much more functional with ONCD at the top. CISA, ONCD, the NSC and the NSA had a problematic lack of communication on cyber during the Biden administration, Harrell said. 

“ONCD needs to play the U.S. government’s ‘quarterback’ and turn into the authoritative resource for the president in times of cyber crisis,” he said.

Matt Pearl, a former NSC director and special adviser for emerging technologies, agreed that a collaborative approach is needed.

The various cyber offices and agencies must get along, he said, noting that “dynamics between the NSC and ONCD are going to be really important to them being effective.”  

Coker’s lack of traction inside the White House was not his fault, observers said. 

He likely would have slowly developed a more prominent role had Kamala Harris won the presidency, Montgomery said. But under Biden, Montgomery said, Coker had more limited power to get things done. 

Neuberger’s close relationship with Sullivan gave her the ability to get quick buy-in for cyber initiatives, Montgomery said.

In addition to the loss of Neuberger’s position, the reduced staff size at the NSC cyber office also will benefit ONCD, which has more bodies, said Pearl, who now serves as director of the technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

Still, even as ONCD rises due to its size and Cairncross’s relationships, the NSC will play an important part in the administration’s cyber efforts due to its role convening the interagency to resolve policy disputes, Pearl said. 

The NSC on offense

Neuberger’s team focused more on defensive cyber policy, a role Congress intended ONCD would oversee, Lewis and Montgomery said.

She pushed for a greater emphasis on offensive cyber actions, but was constrained by objections from other government agencies, Lewis said.

“Anne had to wrestle with a very difficult interagency community,” Lewis said. “She felt frustrated at times about the difficulty of getting people to agree on offensive action, but it's not for lack of trying.”

Lewis said it’s important to remember that a more beefed-up offensive strategy alone isn’t enough for success.

“It has to be offense and engagement, and these folks don't seem to be good at that,” he said of the Trump administration. “It's a good team, but the question is how well they play on the field, and we don't know that.”

Regardless, ONCD benefits from that sharper offensive focus at the NSC, Montgomery and Lewis said.

The NSC has a “different assignment now and … it empowers ONCD to do the job they're assigned to do. They weren't [empowered] before,” Montgomery said. “ONCD will come into its own in a way it didn't in the Biden administration.”