Introducing the Anthropic National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council

Today, we are announcing the formation of the Anthropic National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council, 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.

The Advisory Council includes former Senators as well as former leaders from the U.S. Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, and former national security advisors to bipartisan Congressional leaders.

The Advisory Council will help us identify and develop high-impact applications that strengthen U.S. and close allies’ capabilities in key areas ranging from cybersecurity to intelligence analysis to scientific research. Members will also help us deepen our public-private partnerships and support development of industry-leading standards to promote a “race to the top” for impactful, responsible national security applications.

Members of the Council

We look forward to announcing additional Council members in the coming months as our research and partnerships with public sector institutions advance. Today, we are honored to welcome the following inaugural members:

• Roy Blunt, Former U.S. Senator for Missouri and member of the Select Committee on Intelligence and Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, currently serves on the boards of Tenent Healthcare and the cyber company Nightwing. Senator Blunt has served on the board of Southwest Airlines and as chairman of the advisory board of the National Geospatial Agency. He is chairman of Leadership Strategies at HB Strategies.
• David S. Cohen, former Deputy Director of CIA and Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Mr. Cohen was previously a partner at WilmerHale, and is currently a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.
• Richard Fontaine, Member of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust, Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security. Mr. Fontaine is also Executive Director of the Trilateral Commission and a former foreign policy advisor to the late Senator John McCain.
• Christopher Fonzone, former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ; and former General Counsel of ODNI during the Biden administration. Mr. Fonzone previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Counsel and NSC Legal Adviser; and Special Counsel to the DoD General Counsel during the Obama administration. He also previously worked as a partner at Sidley Austin and in management consulting, as well as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the Department of Defense.
• Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, CEO of Wolverine Global and former Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration during the first Trump administration. Her career spanned senior roles focused on nuclear security and counterterrorism and recently served as a Commissioner on the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.
• Josh Hodges, Senior Director of Corporate Affairs and Senior Advisor to the Chair at VEON Ltd. Mr. Hodges was formerly the National Security Advisor to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and the Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration. He serves as a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
• Jill M. Hruby, former Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration during the Biden administration. Dr. Hruby previously served as Director of Sandia National Laboratories. Her research and leadership are focused on nuclear weapons science, nuclear security, non-proliferation, and arms control.
• Mike Kuiken, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and an Expert Advisor to the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP). He was formerly National Security Advisor to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He also serves on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and his expertise centers on national security policy, technology, and competitiveness.
• Dave Luber, former Director of Cybersecurity at the National Security Agency and as former Executive Director of U.S. Cyber Command. Mr. Luber's 38-year career as a civil servant focused on cybersecurity operations, nation-state cyber threats, and public-private security partnerships.
• Patrick M. Shanahan, former Acting Secretary of Defense and former Deputy Secretary of Defense under the first Trump administration, current CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, and serves on the boards of Leidos and CAE. Mr. Shanahan spent over three decades at The Boeing Company. His expertise spans defense acquisition, large-scale product development and manufacturing, and global supply chain management. He served as the Chair of University of Washington Board of Regents.
• Jon Tester, former U.S. Senator from Montana and former Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, where he oversaw $800 billion in defense and intelligence spending. Senator Tester is also a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and a political analyst at MSNBC.

Anthropic’s commitment to U.S. AI leadership

Deep public sector engagement is essential to Anthropic’s mission of ensuring the world safely makes the transition through transformative AI and that the United States and closely allied democracies continue to lead the development and deployment of powerful and trusted frontier AI, particularly for national security.

To that end, Anthropic has taken significant steps over the past several months to accelerate the responsible adoption of frontier AI capabilities across the defense, intelligence, and broader public sector community. This has included introducing a custom set of Claude Gov models built exclusively for U.S. national security customers, our $200 million partnership with DOD to prototype frontier AI capabilities that advance U.S. national security, deploying Claude to 10,000 scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, partnering with the National Nuclear Security Administration to develop nuclear safeguards for AI, and making Claude available for $1 to all three branches of government.

In addition, as AI systems grow more capable, understanding their national security implications is increasingly vital. Over the past year, we have voluntarily partnered with the Department of Energy’s nuclear experts to assess our models’ potential to divulge sensitive information about nuclear weapons and with the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation and UK AI Security Institute to test our models’ biological, cyber, and AI R&D capabilities.

The Council will aid in the development of safe, effective, and cutting edge technology for the United States and closely allied democracies to establish and maintain enduring technological advantages in this vital era of strategic competition.