Dr. Hicks is the first Senate-confirmed woman as the Deputy Secretary of Defense. She will be succeeding the post following the departure of David Norquist. Dr. Hicks is described as a “trusted advisor to President-elect Joe Biden with decades of national security and foreign policy experience” and she led the Biden-Harris Transition’s Defense Agency Review Team. During her tenure under the Obama administration, Dr. Hicks helped implement the Pivot to Asia strategy at the Pentagon. During her time at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr. Hicks wrote substantially for the Counter-Coercion Series which focused on maritime security issues in the East and South China Sea. POLITICO commented that her nomination was “also is a reassuring sign to members of the national security community who have sounded the alarm over Austin’s lack of experience in countering China, which they believe is the Pentagon’s most urgent challenge.”

Dr. Hicks sees China’s rising military capability as a direct challenge to the United States. In her testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission regarding PLA modernization and implications for the United States and beyond, Dr. Hicks described the challenge as “With a decided lack of transparency in its investments and intentions, alongside a manifest series of coercive and, at times, extralegal actions in the cyber, air, and maritime domains, China has largely demonstrated a will to compete rather than cooperate. In the defense realm, the same can be fairly said of the United States.”