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Emphatically? The director of the NSA is required to be a four star general and concurrently serves as commander of US Cyber Command. Ostensibly non-military, p
by crmd 3y ago
Emphatically? The director of the NSA is required to be a four star general and concurrently serves as commander of US Cyber Command. Ostensibly non-military, perhaps.
- CuriousCosmic 3y agoThe director is required to be a commissioned officer (and upon taking the role gets the O-10 grade) because they also head Cyber Command and the CSS (Central Security Service) but they don't really "run" the NSA like you'd expect say the director of the FBI or CIA to. Their role instead is mostly to coordinate the interaction between the NSA, CSS, and CYBERCOM on top of running CYBERCOM itself. When it comes to actual day to day operations however the deputy director (who is required to be a technically experienced civilian) actually runs things and reports directly to the president. The director isn't actually in the deputy director's chain of command however one of their job roles is to provide advisory support to the director when needed.
- dmix 3y agoThe assistant Secretary of Health is also a commissioned 4 star admiral but they have never seen been the inside of a Navy ship. The last one was a pediatrician before joining. There's a lot of symbolic and tradition based commissions like that through the US gov.
- jki275 3y agoCommissioned in the US Public Health Service, not the US Navy. Their ranks are the same as the Navy's, but they have no connection to the Navy.