WASHINGTON — In the wake of a major shakeup at the National Security Council, the new White House Office of Shipbuilding, announced by President Donald Trump earlier this year, has been moved and its leader departed, according to public statements.
The office itself still exists, but is no longer under the NSC. Instead, according to a White House spokeswoman, the office now lives under the Office of Management and Budget.
The office “is being moved to OMB and there is also a greater emphasis on shipbuilding at [the] State [Department],” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to Breaking Defense.
Trump announced the establishment of the office during an address to a joint session of Congress in March and followed up with an executive order in April aimed at revitalizing the country’s maritime industry. At the time, industry was excited about the possibility of a national-level focus on shipbuilding.
The NSC office was spearheaded by former National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Ian Bennitt, a former congressional staffer who joined the National Security Council in January. Waltz departed the NSC in May and is the administration’s nominee to become ambassador to the United Nations, and Reuters first reported Bennitt’s departure on Wednesday.
Neither the White House nor Bennitt himself directly responded to questions about his departure, but late Wednesday night Bennitt announced on his LinkedIn account that he was joining Mach Industries, a California-based defense tech startup, as vice president for governmental affairs.
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The shift follows the administration’s move to have Secretary of State Marco Rubio serve as the interim national security advisor given Waltz’s departure. Since Rubio has taken the reigns as the NSA, both the NSC and State Department have undergone major reductions in staffing.