WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hung Cao was named acting Navy secretary following the departure of John Phelan. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tasked Cao with modernizing base infrastructure, improving quality-of-life issues for sailors and marines, and raising recruiting standards.

"We need to rethink naval warfare," Cao said. "We need to be ready for what happens tomorrow."

He said the military was living each day like it was 10 September 2001. He said the country must accelerate shipbuilding while improving technology to defeat hypersonic missiles and other threats.

At his confirmation hearing for undersecretary of the Navy, Cao said availability of ships hovered at about 60%, describing that level of readiness as "horrid." He has also been a point person in the administration on permitting vaccine refusal in the military and on eliminating "DEI" policies in the military.

As a Republican Senate candidate, he said, "The military should be recruiting alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them, and ask for seconds."

Cao ran as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Virginia's northern suburbs in 2022 and lost to Jennifer Wexton. He ran as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2024 and lost to Tim Kaine. As a candidate, he expressed support for a national abortion ban.

Cao fled Vietnam with his family when he was four years old and lived in Niger as a child while his father worked for USAID. He enlisted in the Navy in 1989 before graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy and earning a commission as a special operations officer.

Cao served on active duty as a diver and explosive ordnance technician with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He led the team that recovered the body of John F. Kennedy Jr. off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. He served as section head for the budget programming division in the office of the chief of naval operations before retiring as a captain in 2021.

Cao earned a master's degree in applied physics from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and completed fellowships at MIT and Harvard. His son is graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2024.