Biden to Restore Homeland Security and Assist Cybersecurity for White House Senior Posts

“We will once again tackle border security, biosecurity, global public health and strengthen the resilience of our democracy,” she said in a short interview. . “The last of them has become more urgent.”

Mr. Trump lifted the National Security Council’s pandemic preparedness office, and while he had an active online group at the beginning of his term, it was worn out. “It is very disturbing to be in a moment of transition when there are really no partners for that transition to happen,” said Sherwood-Randall.

“The challenge will be to restart this office,” said Ashton B. Carter, a former Secretary of Defense who hired Sherwood-Randall in the Clinton administration.

He noted that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ms. Sherwood-Randall worked to establish relations with former Soviet republics while “also dismantling their nuclear legacies”.

Mr. Biden also announced that Sherwood-Randall’s deputy will be Russ Travers, a 42-year veteran of the intelligence community, where he focuses on counterterrorism. The Trump administration abruptly replaced Mr. Travers as acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center in March during the scheduled cuts of national intelligence chief Richard Grenell.

Mr. Travers twice postponed his retirement to temporarily lead the National Counterterrorism Center. But he was so frightened at what he saw as the Trump administration was slipping back in counterterrorism priorities so he shared his concern with the intelligence community’s inspector general last year. in the last weeks of work.

Over the summer, he predicts right-wing violence will intensify if Mr Trump is re-elected.

Ms. Neuberger is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and her family moved to Brooklyn after the failed Hungarian revolution in the 1950s. She began her career in the private sector, directing technology. at the American Stock Transfer and Trust Company, until she became a member of the White House, a program that brought talented outsiders into government for a year. But she soon joined the National Security Agency, where she was the first risk director and spearheaded the election security effort.