Chris Brose
Chris Brose (Christian Brose) is an American defense policy specialist who is president and chief strategy officer of Anduril IndustriesAnduril IndustriesAnduril Industries is a defense technology company headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, United States, co-founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and several former Palantir and Oculus employees. It develops autonomous drones, unmanned undersea vehicles, border surveillance towers, counter-drone systems, and the Lattice command-and-control software, and builds its own large-scale weapons manufacturing facilities. As of May 2026, the company was valued at $61 billion.Open the full entry. He was staff director of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee from 2015 to 2018 and is the author of The Kill Chain.
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Key facts
Education
Christian Brose earned a degree in political science from Kenyon College and a degree in international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).[1]
2005–2008Chief Speechwriter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
2009–2018Senator John McCain’s Office and the Senate Armed Services Committee
From 2009 Brose served as senior policy adviser to Senator John McCain, covering national security, foreign policy, intelligence and trade, and made official trips to more than 70 countries.[2][1]
From 2015 to 2018 he was staff director of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, leading the professional staff supporting Chairman McCain, overseeing the national defense budget, programs and policies and the confirmations of senior civilian and military officials, and managing the production, negotiation and passage of four National Defense Authorization Acts for fiscal years 2016 to 2019.[2]
2020Publication of The Kill Chain
In 2020 Hachette published Brose’s book The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare.[1]
February 6, 2023Panel Discussion in an a16z Video
On February 6, 2023, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) published the video “Autonomy & Defense Policy in the 21st Century” on its YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel. In the session, Brose, then Anduril’s chief strategy officer, Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI 8th District) and author and moderator Jacob Helberg discussed the evolution of U.S. policy on the use of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), what a 21st-century military should look like, and the right balance of public and private investment and ownership in autonomous defense technologies.[3]
January 2025President of Anduril Industries
Think Tank and Other Affiliations
Brose is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, an adviser to the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group; he has been a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is a member of the Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry.[1][2][4]