China Task Force chief to be nominated for key DOD post

By Tony Bertuca / April 21, 2021 at 3:33 PM

President Biden intends to nominate Pentagon official Ely Ratner to be assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, according to the White House.

Ratner, a longtime Biden aide, is currently the head of the Defense Department’s China Task Force.

From 2015 to 2017, Ratner served as then-Vice President Biden’s deputy national security adviser. He also served in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian affairs at the State Department from 2011 to 2012. Ratner previously worked as a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In February, Ratner told reporters the China Task Force was established to ensure DOD is playing its role in the Biden administration’s whole-of-government strategy to counter China.

"What is clear is that this issue of technology competition is of increasing importance in the U.S.-China relationship," he said. "What we're going to be doing on the task force is trying to understand . . . whether the Department of Defense is properly organized to try to address these types of issues."

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