Hon. Elbridge Colby

Hon. Elbridge Colby is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy & Force Development, and was recently a Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He focuses on strategic deterrence, nuclear weapons, conventional force and intelligence.

Hon. Elbridge Colby is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy & Force Development.   

He was most recently a Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where he consulted extensively with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Strategic Command, and the U.S. Department of State. He previously served as the Deputy Head for National Security Personnel on the Mitt Romney pre-transition effort, and as a Principal Analyst and Division Lead for global strategic affairs at CNA. Before that, he served 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 has also served as a consultant to a variety of U.S. Government entities on a range of defense and intelligence matters.

Colby is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and Co-chairman of the Washington, D.C. Advisory Committee of the Hamilton Society. He is a recipient of the Exceptional Public Service Award from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and of the Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards from the Department of State.

He focuses on strategic deterrence, nuclear weapons, conventional force and intelligence.

Colby co-edited Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations, 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’, and has published book chapters in a number of edited collections. He also publishes regularly on defense and foreign policy issues in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, and Orbis.

Colby is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.