---
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
aliases:
  - "National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council"
tags:
  - Organization
  - Anthropic
  - NationalSecurity
  - IntelligenceCommunity
summary: "Advisory council formed by Anthropic in August 2025 of former senators and defense, intelligence, nuclear and Justice Department officials, including a former deputy CIA director and NSA cybersecurity director."
start: 2025-08-27
relations:
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[David S. Cohen]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2025-08-27
    fn: 1
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Patrick Shanahan]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2025-08-27
    fn: 1
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Roy Blunt]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2025-08-27
    fn: 1
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Jon Tester]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2025-08-27
    fn: 1
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Richard Fontaine]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2025-08-27
    fn: 1
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
---

[[Anthropic]] announced the council on August 27, 2025, as "a group of leading bipartisan national security and public policy practitioners who will help Anthropic support the [[U.S. government]] and closely allied democracies in building and maintaining enduring technological advantages in an era of strategic competition," with the task of identifying "high-impact applications" in areas "ranging from cybersecurity to intelligence analysis to scientific research." Its inaugural members were:[^1]

- [[Roy Blunt]], former senator from Missouri and member of the [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]], director of Tenet Healthcare and of the cyber company Nightwing, and former chairman of the advisory board of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
- [[David S. Cohen]], former deputy director of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
- [[Richard Fontaine]], chief executive of the [[Center for a New American Security]], executive director of the [[Trilateral Commission]], former foreign-policy adviser to Senator John McCain, and a member of Anthropic's own [[Long-Term Benefit Trust]].
- [[Christopher Fonzone]], former head of the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s Office of Legal Counsel and general counsel of the [[Office of the Director of National Intelligence]] under Biden.
- [[Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty]], administrator of the [[National Nuclear Security Administration]] in Trump's first term.
- [[Josh Hodges]], former national security adviser to Speaker [[Mike Johnson]] and senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the [[National Security Council]], then an executive at VEON Ltd.
- [[Jill M. Hruby]], administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration under Biden and former director of [[Sandia National Laboratories]].
- [[Mike Kuiken]], former national security adviser to Senate Majority Leader [[Chuck Schumer]] and an adviser to the [[Special Competitive Studies Project]].
- [[Dave Luber]], former director of cybersecurity at the [[National Security Agency]] and executive director of [[United States Cyber Command|U.S. Cyber Command]].
- [[Patrick Shanahan]], former acting Secretary of Defense, chief executive of Spirit AeroSystems and director of [[Leidos]].
- [[Jon Tester]], former senator from Montana and chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, "where he oversaw $800 billion in defense and intelligence spending."

Six months later Anthropic refused the [[Pentagon]]'s demand to drop its exclusions for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, and was designated a supply-chain risk.[^2]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Anthropic, "Introducing the Anthropic National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council," August 27, 2025. https://www.anthropic.com/news/introducing-the-anthropic-national-security-and-public-sector-advisory-council
[^2]: Amodei, Dario. "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War." Anthropic, February 26, 2026, https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war ; "Amazon says Anthropic's Claude still OK for AWS customers to use outside defense work." *CNBC,* March 6, 2026.