Elbridge Colby

Elbridge Colby is the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where he focuses on strategic, deterrence, nuclear weapons, conventional force, intelligence, and related issues. In 2012, he served as the deputy head for national security personnel on the Mitt Romney pre-transition effort and also worked on several of the campaign’s security policy teams. From 2010 to 2013, he was a principal analyst and division lead for global strategic affairs at CNA. Before that, he served for over five years in the U.S. Government, including as policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense’s Representative for the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, as an expert advisor to the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, as a staff member on the President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding WMD, with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and with the State Department. Colby co-edited the volume “Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations” (Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2013), co-chaired a CSIS working group study on U.S.-China nuclear weapons issues entitled “Nuclear Weapons and U.S.-China Relations: A Way Forward” (Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2013), and has published book chapters in a number of edited collections. He also publishes regularly on defense and foreign policy issues in a variety of venues such as Politico, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, and Orbis. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.