DOGE Staffer Takes Helm at Office of Naval Research
The U.S. Navy has selected a former DOGE member, ex-McKinsey consultant Rachel Riley, to replace a senior Navy admiral as head of the Office of Naval Research. As the new civilian chief of ONR, Riley now oversees the Navy's research-grant enterprise, which pays university and contract scientists to produce the basic research essential to maintaining the Navy's technological edge.
Riley is a veteran of the DOGE-led staff reduction program at the Department of Health and Human Services. Under her leadership, according to Politico, the DOGE intervention team attempted to reduce headcount at HHS by 8,000 positions, with most of the layoffs concentrated in the research-focused National Institutes of Health (NIH); the number of layoffs was ultimately reduced to about 1,000. One of her last acts at HHS was to propose the elimination of the Center for Scientific Review at NIH, the body's grant-review bureau, according to Politico; the Center's grant function within NIH is similar to the research-funding mission of ONR.
Early in her career, Riley took a doctorate at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then settled into a long-term job with McKinsey. She rose through the ranks in the Washington, D.C. and Atlanta offices, and she made partner in late 2022. Riley's public resume does not describe experience with engineering or research, other than her nine-month appointment to the DOGE team at Health and Human Services.
Riley, 33, has been selected to assume the duties of previous ONR commander Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus, a software engineering PhD who has served in the Navy for 33 years.
Rear Adm. Rothenhaus had run ONR since 2023; before that, he served in a variety of command roles related to the Navy's digital infrastructure development, including chief of the Navy’s Tactical Networks Program Office and head of the giant San Diego R&D complex, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific).
ONR grants underwrite the work of leading research universities' oceanography and engineering departments, as well as the functioning of the UNOLS "white hull" fleet of civilian research vessels. All of the T-AGOR-class research ships at American universities were built by the Navy, belong to ONR as the shipowner, and are chartered to their respective academic operators. It is also home to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), a Nobel-winning research establishment headquartered on the Potomac.
Over the years, ONR and NRL have delivered useful technological contributions to the nation's defense. Their accomplishments include the invention of radar; the idea of GPS; the SOSUS subsea surveillance system; the first surveillance satellite; and key contributions to marine HF radio technology.
Top image: Part of the Naval Research Laboratory campus, a division of ONR (Antony-22 / CC BY SA 4.0)
