The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Center for a New American Security.md

category	aliases	tags	summary	start	location	relations	created	updated
Private Organization	CNAS Center For New American Security Inc	Organization ThinkTank NationalSecurity AIPolicy RevolvingDoor DefenseIndustry	Washington national-security think tank founded in 2007 by Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy, funded by defense contractors, the Pentagon and Coefficient Giving, whose chief executive Richard Fontaine sits on Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust.	2007	Washington, D.C.	type with reverse start fn founded Kurt Campbell true 2007 1 type with reverse start fn founded Michèle Flournoy true 2007 1 type with reverse role fn head_of Michèle Flournoy true chief executive officer 4 type with reverse role start end fn head_of Victoria Nuland true chief executive officer 2018 2019 5 type with reverse role fn head_of Richard Fontaine true chief executive officer 3 type with reverse role end fn director_of Kurt Campbell true board member 2021 5 type with reverse role end fn director_of Avril Haines true board member 2021 5 type with reverse role end fn employed_by Ely Ratner true executive vice president and director of studies 2021 5 type with reverse role end fn employed_by David S. Cohen true adjunct senior fellow 2021 5 type with reverse role end fn employed_by Peter Harrell true adjunct senior fellow 2021 5 type with reverse role end fn employed_by Susanna V. Blume true director, Defense Program 2021 5 type with reverse role end fn employed_by Elizabeth Rosenberg true director, Energy, Economics and Security Program 2021 5 type with reverse role start fn employed_by Paul Scharre true director, Technology and National Security Program, from 2017 2017 4 type with reverse role end fn employed_by Ben FitzGerald true director, Technology and National Security Program 2017 4 type with reverse role start fn employed_by Gregory Allen true adjunct fellow, Technology and National Security Program 2017 4 type with reverse role fn employed_by Vivek Chilukuri true senior fellow and director, Technology and National Security Program 6 type with reverse role fn employed_by Michael Sellitto true adjunct senior fellow; head of global affairs at Anthropic 6 type with reverse role fn employed_by Lynne E. Parker true adjunct senior fellow 6 type with reverse role fn employed_by Tim Fist true senior adjunct fellow 6 type with reverse role fn employed_by Jordan Schneider true adjunct fellow 6 type with reverse role start end fn funded Open Philanthropy true 500,000 dollars or more in fiscal 2025, as Coefficient Giving 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office true 500,000 dollars or more in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Northrop Grumman true 500,000 dollars or more in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Amazon true 500,000 dollars or more in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Rand Corporation true 250,000 to 499,999 dollars in fiscal 2025, conduit for DALHAP Investments Ltd. 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded DARPA true 100,000 to 249,999 dollars in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Anduril Industries true 100,000 to 249,999 dollars in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Founders Pledge true 100,000 to 249,999 dollars in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Open Society Foundations true 100,000 to 249,999 dollars in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2 type with reverse role start end fn funded Scale AI true 50,000 to 99,999 dollars in fiscal 2025 2024-10 2025-09 2	2026-09-23	2026-09-23

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a Washington, D.C. national-security think tank established in 2007 by Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy, its co-founders. It describes itself as "an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit organization" and states that "our board members, founders, leaders, scholars, and interns have held or gone on to prominent positions in the U.S. government, at the departments of Defense and State, the White House, and the Central Intelligence Agency as well as in Congress and the private sector." It "does not engage in lobbying activity" and states that, to the extent it accepts foreign funding, "its activities will be limited to bona fide scholastic, academic, and research-related activities."¹ Its offices are at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.²

Leadership

The chief executive, Richard Fontaine, is concurrently a member of the Long-Term Benefit Trust of Anthropic and executive director of the North America group of the Trilateral Commission. He was foreign-policy adviser to Senator John McCain and to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, minority deputy staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee, associate director for Near Eastern affairs at the National Security Council in 2003 and 2004, and a staff member at the State Department and on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served on the Defense Policy Board from 2021 to 2025.³

Flournoy was chief executive in 2017.⁴ Victoria Nuland was chief executive from 2018 to 2019.⁵

Movement into Government

On January 21, 2021, CNAS congratulated "its experts and alumni selected for positions of responsibility in the Biden administration." Nuland was nominated as under secretary of state for political affairs; Ely Ratner, CNAS's executive vice president and director of studies, was named special assistant to the secretary of defense; Susanna V. Blume, director of the Defense Program, was named senior adviser to the secretary of defense performing the duties of director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation; Elizabeth Rosenberg, director of the Energy, Economics and Security program, was named counselor to the deputy secretary of the Treasury; and Kayla M. Williams was named an assistant secretary of veterans affairs. Two adjunct senior fellows entered government: David S. Cohen as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Peter Harrell as senior director for international economics and competitiveness on the National Security Council staff. The alumni Derek Chollet and Colin Kahl were named counselor of the State Department and under secretary of defense. The release stated that they entered government alongside two CNAS board members, Campbell and Avril Haines. Fontaine said: "We take great pride in knowing that they will bring their talents and expertise into government. The Center will remain the locus of national security policy development and dedicated to preparing other rising leaders for service."⁵

Technology and National Security Program

On July 17, 2017, CNAS named Paul Scharre, who had led its Future of Warfare Initiative, director of its Technology and National Security Program, which would "focus on the policy implications of artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber-physical systems, and other emerging technologies for national security." He replaced Ben FitzGerald, "who left CNAS to become a professional staff member for the Majority Staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee." Flournoy described Scharre as "a former Army Ranger with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ... a former force planner in the Pentagon." The same release announced that Melissa Flagg, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for research, had joined as an adjunct senior fellow, and that Gregory Allen would be an adjunct fellow working on "the implications of the artificial intelligence revolution for international security."⁴

The program states that it produces research "to help U.S. and allied policymakers responsibly win and manage the great power competition with China over critical and emerging technologies." In 2026 its director was Vivek Chilukuri and its deputy director Janet Egan. Its adjunct fellows included Michael Sellitto, listed as "Head of Global Affairs, Anthropic"; Lynne E. Parker, listed with the University of Tennessee; Tim Fist; Keegan McBride of the Oxford Internet Institute; Elsa B. Kania; Jack Shanahan; Anthony Vinci; and Jordan Schneider.⁶ Fist was also director of emerging technology policy at the Institute for Progress.⁷ CNAS's wider roster of adjunct experts included Nathaniel Fick, Markus Anderljung and Richard Danzig.²

Funding

CNAS publishes an annual list of donors. For the year from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, it listed four at 500,000 dollars and above: Amazon.com, Inc.; Coefficient Giving, the former Open Philanthropy; Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation; and the Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. At 250,000 to 499,999 dollars were the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Embassy of Japan, the Smith Richardson Foundation, DALHAP Investments Ltd., routed through the Rand Corporation, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.²

At 100,000 to 249,999 dollars the list included Amazon Web Services, Anduril Industries, Chevron, Cisco Systems, Google, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Pfizer, Qualcomm, RTX Corporation, the Semiconductor Industry Association, the Business Roundtable, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Founders Pledge, the Open Society Foundations, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, DARPA, the U.S. European Command's Russia Strategic Initiative, through Huntington Ingalls Industries, and the Savannah River National Laboratory of the National Nuclear Security Administration through Longenecker & Associates. At 50,000 to 99,999 dollars were Microsoft, NVIDIA, Scale AI, BAE Systems, Boeing, Humanity United, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the German Federal Foreign Office, the Korea Foundation and the NATO Summit Consortium, through the Atlantic Council. Smaller donors included Neal Blue, through General Atomics, Epirus, ExxonMobil, General Dynamics, SoftBank Group, the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence, Flournoy, Danzig, Robert O. Work and Peter Harrell.²

Coefficient Giving is also a listed supporter of Americans for Responsible Innovation and of the Foundation for American Innovation.⁸⁹

CNAS files with the Internal Revenue Service as Center For New American Security Inc, EIN 20-8084828. Its returns show the following (in dollars):¹⁰

Year	Revenue	Expenses	Contributions	Assets
2016	14,790,085	9,157,223	14,559,714	8,611,251
2017	12,531,802	9,751,151	12,166,810	11,555,217
2018	7,812,811	10,589,419	7,527,359	8,397,810
2019	13,571,524	11,638,724	13,238,323	10,283,116
2020	11,033,683	10,115,430	10,726,982	11,631,735
2021	11,475,266	8,650,458	11,111,724	13,596,395
2022	18,714,520	10,806,569	18,244,145	21,809,358
2023	14,400,563	11,784,293	13,321,466	25,669,934

Footnotes

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1. Center for a New American Security, "About CNAS," accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.cnas.org/mission ↩︎

2. Center for a New American Security, "CNAS Supporters," contributions from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.cnas.org/support-cnas/cnas-supporters ↩︎

3. Center for a New American Security, "Richard Fontaine," biography, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.cnas.org/people/richard-fontaine ↩︎

4. Urwitz, Neal. "Paul Scharre Named Director of CNAS Technology and National Security Program." Center for a New American Security, July 17, 2017. https://www.cnas.org/press/press-release/paul-scharre-named-director-of-cnas-technology-and-national-security-program ↩︎

5. Korman, Shai. "CNAS Experts and Alumni Selected for Senior Leadership Positions in the Biden Administration." Center for a New American Security, January 21, 2021. https://www.cnas.org/press/press-release/cnas-experts-and-alumni-selected-for-senior-leadership-positions-in-the-biden-administration ↩︎

6. Center for a New American Security, "Technology & National Security," research team listing, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.cnas.org/research/technology-and-national-security ↩︎

7. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Institute For Progress," EIN 87-2449729, Form 990 filings for fiscal years 2021 through 2024. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/872449729 ↩︎

8. Foundation for American Innovation, "About Us," accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.thefai.org/about-us ↩︎

9. Americans for Responsible Innovation, "About Us," accessed September 23, 2026. https://ari.us/about-us/ ↩︎

10. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Center For New American Security Inc," EIN 20-8084828, Form 990 data for tax years 2016 through 2023. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208084828 ↩︎