US Senate confirms Indian-American as Dy Under Secretary of Defense

The US Senate confirmed Indian-American Radha Iyengar Plumb as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment y a bipartisan 68-30 vote. President Joe Biden had nominated Plumb, currently serving as Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, to the position in June 2022.

"By a vote of 68-30, the Senate confirmed Radha Iyengar Plumb to be a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense," the US Senate Periodical Press Gallery tweeted.

Prior to her appointment as Chief of Staff, she was director of research and insights for trust and safety at Google with oversight of teams responsible for technical research, data science and business analytics.

She previously served as the Global Head of Policy Analysis at Facebook where she focused on high risk/high harm safety and critical international security issues.

In her Linkedin profile, Plumb describes herself as an experienced leader with deep technical analytic skills and a demonstrated history of working in the government, academia, and industry. Plumb previously was a Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation where she focused on improving measurement and evaluation of readiness and security efforts across the Department of Defense.

She also held a number of senior staff positions on national security issues at the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the White House National Security Council. At the outset of her career, Plumb was an Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics and did her postdoctoral work at Harvard. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Economics from Princeton University, and holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.