Matthew Waxman

Senior Advisor

Former Principal Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

Matthew Waxman is an expert in national security policy, international law, cybersecurity, and data privacy. He directs the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School, and he co-chairs the Cybersecurity Center at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute.

Matthew served in senior positions at the U.S. State Department, Defense Department, and National Security Council during the George W. Bush Administration. His positions included Principal Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Executive Assistant to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Matthew is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and he studied international relations as a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom. After law school, he served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Joel M. Flaum. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and earlier in his career he worked as a foreign policy and national security analyst at RAND.