---
aliases:
- National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council
category: AI & Effective Altruism
created: 2026-09-22
relations:
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: 2025-08-27
  type: member_of
  with: '[[David S. Cohen]]'
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: 2025-08-27
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Patrick Shanahan]]'
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: 2025-08-27
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Roy Blunt]]'
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: 2025-08-27
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Jon Tester]]'
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: 2025-08-27
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Richard Fontaine]]'
start: 2025-08-27
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.
tags:
- Organization
- Anthropic
- NationalSecurity
- IntelligenceCommunity
updated: 2026-09-22
---

[Anthropic](/organizations/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](/organizations/us-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](/organizations/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 [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) 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](/organizations/long-term-benefit-trust/).
- Christopher Fonzone, former head of the [Justice Department](/organizations/department-of-justice/)'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](/organizations/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](/organizations/sandia-national-laboratories/).
- Mike Kuiken, former national security adviser to Senate Majority Leader [Chuck Schumer](/people/chuck-schumer/) and an adviser to the [Special Competitive Studies Project](/organizations/special-competitive-studies-project/).
- Dave Luber, former director of cybersecurity at the [National Security Agency](/organizations/nsa/) and executive director of 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](/organizations/pentagon/)'s demand to drop its exclusions for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, and was designated a supply-chain risk.[^2]

[^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.