Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Center for a New American Security
CNAS is a moderately important national security think tank with substantive but secondary relevance to AI safety, approaching AI risks through a geopolitical/national security lens rather than existential risk framing; this article is unusually thorough for a think tank profile, with detailed funding disclosures, a genuine criticisms section, and honest framing of CNAS's partial overlap with AI safety concerns.
Quick Assessment
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | Nonprofit think tank |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founders | Michèle Flournoy, Kurt M. Campbell |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| CEO | Richard Fontaine |
| Annual Budget | Under $6 million |
| Staff | ≈50 |
| Focus | National security, defense policy, technology & AI in warfare |
| Relevance to AI Safety | AI governance, misalignment risks from agentic systems, compute governance |
Key Links
| Source | Link |
|---|---|
| Official Website | cnas.org |
| Wikipedia | en.wikipedia.org |
Overview
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., focused on developing U.S. national security and defense policy. Founded in February 2007 by Michèle Flournoy and Kurt M. Campbell, CNAS was established during the final years of the George W. Bush presidency as a liberal-to-centrist alternative to neoconservative foreign policy thinking. According to CNAS's self-description, its mission is to develop strong, pragmatic, and principled national security policies that promote American interests, engaging policymakers, experts, and the public through fact-based research.
CNAS operates eight research programs—five functional and three regional—covering areas ranging from defense technology and national security law to Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and transatlantic security. The organization convenes more than 800 national security stakeholders annually at its flagship National Security Conference. CNAS has developed a notable presence in debates around artificial intelligence in warfare and national security, explicitly including risks from misalignment and loss of control from agentic AI systems as a domain of concern.
Despite its relatively modest budget and staff size, CNAS has been influential in both Democratic and Republican policy circles, with numerous alumni serving in senior government roles. Critics, however, have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest stemming from funding by major defense contractors, foreign governments, and technology companies, as well as a perceived hawkish tilt in its policy recommendations.
History
CNAS was co-founded in February 2007 by Michèle Flournoy, who had previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy under President Bill Clinton, and Kurt M. Campbell. The organization was positioned from the outset as a centrist, bipartisan voice on national security, and quickly attracted attention for its potential influence on incoming Democratic administrations. By 2009, The Washington Post had described CNAS as Washington's "go-to" institution on military affairs, and prominent figures including General David Petraeus and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg publicly praised the organization at its annual conference.
In 2010, CNAS launched a cybersecurity project co-chaired by Bob Kahn, John Michael McConnell, Joseph Nye, and Peter Schwartz, reflecting early attention to emerging technology threats. The organization advocated for targeted federal cybersecurity spending in The Hill in 2011. The early leadership structure saw Nathaniel Fick serve as CEO (2009–2012) and John Nagl as President (2009–2012), before Richard Fontaine became President in 2012. Flournoy went on to serve as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President Obama from 2009 to 2012, and Campbell later served as Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden administration—both trajectories illustrating CNAS's "farm team" role for Democratic administrations, as critics have characterized it.
In 2015, CNAS released the report "Battlefields and Boardrooms: Women's Leadership in the Military and Private Sector," which led to the creation of its National Security Women's Leadership project, supported by a MacArthur Foundation grant. In 2016, CNAS launched its "Papers for the Next President" series, producing twelve reports covering U.S.-Russia relations, Asia-Pacific security, and Middle East strategy. Victoria Nuland, previously undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Biden administration, served as CEO from 2021 to 2024. Richard Fontaine, who had served as President from 2012 to 2019, returned as CEO and continues in that role.
Founding member Shawn Brimley, who made significant contributions to CNAS and national security policy, is honored through the organization's next-generation leadership program, which was renamed the Shawn Brimley Next Generation National Security Leaders Program in June 2018.
Research Programs and Work
CNAS organizes its work across five functional research programs—Defense; Energy, Economics & Security; National Security Human Capital; National Security Law; and Technology & National Security—and three regional programs covering Indo-Pacific Security, Middle East Security, and Transatlantic Security.
The organization's research has addressed a wide range of defense and security topics. In 2024, CNAS conducted war-gaming experiments examining the potential role of underwater drones and autonomous drone operations in Taiwan-China conflict scenarios, and recommended enhanced collaboration among Quadrilateral Security Dialogue partners. CNAS also published analysis of weaknesses in the U.S. Space Force in 2024, and has proposed shifting heavy army units into the Army National Guard and Army Reserve as a cost containment measure—a recommendation that has faced pushback from military officials who note that state governors typically prefer light units for domestic emergencies.
On artificial intelligence, CNAS operates an AI Security and Stability Project that explicitly frames its focus as understanding and mitigating risks from "national security relevant advanced AI capabilities," including the risks of future misalignment or loss of control from agentic AI systems, alongside dangers in cyber operations, biological weapons, and nuclear stability. A separate Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative examines AI's impact on global power, conflict, and crisis stability. CNAS's Sharper: AI Safety and Stability Series provides expert commentary on AI regulation, international oversight, and managing risks from frontier models. The organization submitted comments to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in May 2023 recommending technical safety research, risk assessments, evaluations before model release, and federal policy levers. CNAS has also engaged with compute governance as a mechanism for controlling frontier AI development, and has analyzed open-source AI models' safety trade-offs. Paul Scharre, CNAS's Executive Vice President, is among the organization's most prominent voices on AI and military applications.
CNAS researchers are regularly cited in major media outlets including Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and across broadcast media. CNAS alumni have been appointed to at least sixteen foreign policy roles in the Biden administration alone.
Leadership and People
Richard Fontaine serves as CEO and is the public face of the organization. He previously served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and held roles at the State Department, National Security Council, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Michèle Flournoy serves as Chair of the Board and the Shawn Brimley Next Generation National Security Leaders Program. James Murdoch serves as Vice Chair of the Board.
The Board of Directors includes several figures with significant government experience: Richard Armitage, who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush; Richard J. Danzig, who served as Secretary of the Navy from 1998 to 2001 under President Clinton; and Jane Wales, who served as Special Assistant to the President in the Clinton administration. Douglas A. Beck, Vice President of the Americas and Northeast Asia for Apple, Inc., is also a board member, as are Michael J. Zak (venture capitalist and founder of Cornell's program on China and Asia-Pacific Studies), Denis A. Bovin (Senior Advisor to Evercore Partners), Douglas Silverman (co-founder of Senator Investment Group), and Michael Sonnenfeldt (philanthropist and former co-chair of Senator Joe Lieberman's 2004 presidential campaign).
Resident experts and fellows include Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Paul Scharre, Emily Kilcrease, Carrie Cordero, Lisa Curtis, and Stacie Pettyjohn, among many others. Anna Saito Carson serves as Vice President of Development, having previously worked at the CSIS Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies's parent institution, CSIS.
Funding
CNAS has an annual budget reported to be under $6 million and publicly discloses its supporters on an annual basis. For fiscal year October 2024 to September 2025, major supporters at the $500,000 and above level included Amazon.com, Inc., Coefficient Giving, and Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation. Supporters in the $250,000–$499,999 range included the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Embassy of Japan to the United States, the Smith Richardson Foundation, Qualcomm, RTX Corporation, the Semiconductor Industry Association, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and several U.S. Department of Defense agencies including DARPA and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
Additional named supporters in lower tiers include Microsoft, NVIDIA, Scale AI, SoftBank Group Corp., The Boeing Company, Leonardo DRS, the Lithuania Ministry of Defence, Mastercard, Schneider Electric, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, among others. From 2019 to 2023, CNAS received a total of $3,985,000 from U.S. government sources including the Department of State and the Department of Defense.
The MacArthur Foundation has been a significant grant-maker to CNAS, providing funds under its Nuclear Challenges program: a $1,300,000 grant in 2018 over three years for counter-proliferation finance work, a $50,000 grant in 2018 for exploratory research on national security institutions using Iran and North Korea as case studies, a $400,000 grant in 2016 for proliferation finance trend analysis, and a $100,000 grant in 2008. Open Philanthropy has not been documented as a direct funder of CNAS.
The breadth of CNAS's funding—spanning major defense contractors, technology companies, foreign governments, and U.S. federal agencies—has attracted scrutiny regarding potential conflicts of interest, discussed further below.
Criticisms and Controversies
CNAS faces several recurring lines of criticism that are worth examining critically, even if none rises to the level of a legal or institutional failure.
Funding conflicts and undisclosed interests. An analysis by the Revolving Door Project identified what it characterized as a pattern of CNAS issuing policy recommendations that benefited major donors without adequate disclosure. In a notable example, a 2018 CNAS report recommended that the U.S. Air Force purchase 50–75 additional B-21 bomber jets—a contract potentially worth $33–$49 billion—at a time when Northrop Grumman, the B-21's manufacturer and one of CNAS's largest donors, stood to benefit directly. The report reportedly did not include a disclosure acknowledging Northrop Grumman's support. Similarly, CNAS accepted $250,000 from the United Arab Emirates in 2016 to conduct a private study on the UAE's interest in changes to the Missile Technology Control Regime—work that informed a later public U.S. drone policy paper—during a period when the UAE was engaged in operations in Yemen that relied heavily on drone technology. CNAS received funding from Taiwan in the $100,000–$249,999 range in fiscal years preceding its 2020 report "Rising to the China Challenge," which recommended U.S. investment in strengthening ties with Taiwan. Four months after the B-21 report was publicly identified as a potential conflict-of-interest case, CNAS had not added a disclaimer, according to Revolving Door Project reporting.
Kurt Campbell, co-founder of CNAS, testified before Congress that the organization maintains a clear separation between its publications and the products or interests of its donors. Critics have argued that the specific cases above constitute violations of that stated standard.
Revolving door and Democratic party ties. CNAS has been described by critics as functioning as a "farm team" for Democratic administrations, with multiple employees hired by the Obama and Biden teams. At least sixteen CNAS alumni were appointed to foreign policy roles in the Biden administration. While CNAS positions this as a mark of its influence, critics raise concern that such close ties to partisan administrations—and the career incentives they create—may compromise the independence of CNAS analysis. Victoria Nuland's tenure as CNAS CEO (2021–2024) and her subsequent advocacy for increased defense spending and NATO eastern border bases, at a time when CNAS was receiving funding from Latvia and Lithuania, has been cited as illustrative of the revolving door dynamic.
Hawkish policy orientation. CNAS has been characterized by left-leaning critics as a hawkish liberal think tank that pushes the Democratic Party toward interventionist foreign policy. The 2016 report "Extending American Power," endorsed by Michèle Flournoy among others, advocated a more interventionist approach than the Obama administration's posture and was cited as influential in Clinton campaign-era and Harris-era policy circles. CNAS supported the Obama-era Libya intervention and maintained aggressive stances on China and other geopolitical competition issues.
Pentagon scrutiny. In February 2026, the Pentagon announced plans to curb its ties with think tanks including CNAS, citing concerns about foreign influence or funding. The specific basis for CNAS's inclusion in this action was not fully detailed in available reporting.
FARA considerations. Legal analysts have raised questions about whether CNAS's work for foreign government donors—such as the UAE's private MTCR study—could require registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, following a 2022 DOJ advisory targeting such think tank activities. CNAS has stated that it limits activities to research when accepting foreign funds and complies with U.S. law.
It is worth noting that CNAS's self-description emphasizes institutional non-partisanship and fact-based research, and its work has been cited and adopted by both Republican and Democratic officials. The criticisms above draw primarily from left-leaning outlets and advocacy organizations, and CNAS has not publicly conceded the specific conflicts-of-interest claims.
Relevance to AI Safety
CNAS's engagement with AI safety is substantive but approaches the topic primarily through a national security lens rather than from an existential risk or long-termist framing. The organization explicitly names misalignment and loss of control from agentic AI systems as risks within scope of its AI Security and Stability Project, which situates these concerns alongside cyber operations, biological weapons, nuclear stability, and U.S.-China AI competition. CNAS has advocated for technical AI safety research and for evaluations of frontier models before release, and has engaged with the question of how compute governance could serve as a lever for managing the development of the most capable AI systems.
This positions CNAS in partial overlap with the AI safety community's concerns, but with a different emphasis: CNAS frames AI risks primarily in terms of geopolitical stability, national security applications, and maintaining U.S. advantages over adversaries, rather than in terms of long-run catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. CNAS has not publicly used existential risk framing, in contrast to organizations like the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) or the Future of Humanity Institute. Its AI work is more closely adjacent to policy-focused entities like the CSET (Center for Security and Emerging Technology), whose research CNAS has cited.
CNAS engaged with the Biden administration's July 2023 voluntary AI safety commitments from major AI companies, and Paul Scharre has been an active commentator on AI action plans and military AI applications in mainstream media.
Key Uncertainties
- The degree to which CNAS's policy recommendations are shaped by its funding sources remains contested. The Revolving Door Project has documented specific cases; CNAS has not publicly acknowledged these as conflicts of interest.
- CNAS's future relationship with the Pentagon is uncertain following the February 2026 announcement of curbed ties with think tanks, the precise scope and duration of which is not yet clear.
- The extent to which CNAS's AI safety work will evolve toward or away from existential risk framings as AI capabilities advance is not established.
- No comprehensive public revenue or budget data beyond the under-$6 million figure is available; the full picture of CNAS's financial position and donor influence is therefore difficult to assess.
References
CNAS is a Washington D.C.-based national security think tank publishing research on defense, technology policy, economic security, and AI governance. Its Technology & National Security program produces policy-relevant work on AI, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies with implications for AI safety and governance.