The Quiet Rise of Hung Cao, America’s New Acting Navy Secretary

Hung Cao’s trajectory has an almost cinematic quality, the kind of arc that Hollywood would consider too neat if it weren’t real. One of the most senior civilian positions in the US military is held by a boy who fled Saigon at the age of four, fingers likely clutching a parent’s hand as the city fell around them. Following John Phelan’s sudden and mysterious departure on April 22, 2026, Cao assumed the role of acting Secretary of the Navy. By way of a social media post, the announcement was made late on a Wednesday in an administrative tone that is clipped and implies there is more to the story than anyone is revealing.

In what was then South Vietnam, Cao was born in 1971. Prior to the fall, his father, Quan Cao, was employed by the South Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and had attended Cornell on a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation. Hung Cao was born and raised in Niger, where his father was employed by USAID as an agricultural specialist.

The family arrived in the United States as refugees in 1975. For a prospective American military officer, this is an unusual biography. At the age of twelve, he returned to the United States and eventually graduated in the first class of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which sends students to MIT rather than the military.

Cao, however, enlisted. In 1989, he enlisted in the Navy as a seaman recruit, and in 1996, the Naval Academy awarded him a commission. A lengthy, technical, and physically taxing career as a diver and explosive ordnance disposal specialist ensued. It’s difficult to ignore how much of his narrative takes place in the unglamorous middle of military life.

Following the 1999 plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard, he was a member of the team on board the USNS Grasp that recovered the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren. He served in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. After more than thirty years of active duty, he retired as a captain in October 2021.

The politics followed. In 2022, Cao ran for the 10th congressional district in Virginia, but she was defeated 53 to 47 by Jennifer Wexton. He was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate two years later, but Tim Kaine defeated him by about nine points. The colorfulness of the campaigns was sometimes unsettling. He once claimed that “witchcraft” had taken over Monterey, California, and identified as “African American” due to his early years spent in Niger. He claimed complete disability after being “blown up in combat many times,” according to USA Today, even though he had not been awarded the Combat Action Ribbon or the Purple Heart. He refused to elaborate.

Observing all of this gives the impression that Cao embodies a specific type of person that Trump’s second term keeps elevating: devoted, combative, and prepared to say things that other officials wouldn’t. In October 2025, he was confirmed as Under Secretary by a vote of 52 to 45, almost entirely along party lines. He now owns the service, at least temporarily, with the Navy operating a blockade of Iranian ports, three carriers close to the Middle East, and a precarious ceasefire that could end at any time. It remains to be seen if “acting” will eventually become permanent. Recently, the Pentagon has refrained from disclosing.