Trump nominates former Unilever CISO to be Pentagon CIO

President Trump has nominated Kirsten Davies, a former chief information security officer at multinational company Unilever, to be the Pentagon's chief information officer.

Though the White House did not release biographical information on Davies, the Defense Department pointed Inside Defense toward her LinkedIn page, confirming that it was hers.

According to Davies’ LinkedIn bio, she served as CISO for Unilever from September 2021 to June 2024 and had other senior information security roles at The Estée Lauder Companies, Barclays bank, Hewlett-Packard and Siemens.

She is also, according to her bio, a “villager” for Team8’s CISO Village, which is “an avenue for exchanging ideas, collaborating as an industry, and promoting innovation in cyber security.” Team8 is a global venture group that invests in companies specializing in cyber capabilities and artificial intelligence.

Davies’ is also, according to LinkedIn, the founder and chief executive officer of a non-profit called the Institute for Cyber Civics, whose mission is “to advance the safety, security, privacy and digital integrity of experiences citizens have while using technology, AI and digital data in their everyday lives.”

The institute has produced a “Cyber Security Handbook for Poll Watchers and Election Observers.”

Her verified account on X includes posts supporting Trump’s tariff policies, opposition to continuing U.S. aid to Ukraine and concerns about election integrity.

Davies has also posted concerns about the use of the Meta-owned digital messaging tool WhatsApp, asserting it is not as secure with end-to-end encryption as many consumers think.

“If the content can be data mined or your messages recreated on the phone after you delete them, it’s not secure,” she wrote.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former national security adviser Mike Waltz have become subjects of controversy for their roles in a group chat using the messaging app Signal, which operates differently from WhatsApp and bills itself as having “state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption.”

Some congressional Democrats, citing security concerns over sensitive military information Hegseth shared on Signal, have called for the defense secretary’s ouster over the matter, making it possible that the controversy could be raised by senators during Davies' upcoming confirmation hearing because of the nominee’s background and expertise.

Meanwhile, some of Davies' other X postings voice alarm over human traffickers’ exploitation of digital platforms and support for women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.