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Alexander Alden is a nonresident senior fellow with the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is a senior counselor at Palantir Technologies, where he focuses on expanding collaboration with allied governments and private sector clients.
Alden previously served in senior roles at the Department of State, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense. As assistant secretary of state (acting) for conflict and stabilization operations, he was responsible for the 2020 US Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability. As deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, he worked to strengthen US-EU relations and to counter Chinese regional influence by establishing the inaugural US-EU dialogue on China in 2020. At the National Security Council, he was senior director for emerging technologies and director for defense policy, where he created and led the interagency committee on critical and emerging technologies. He also served as an advisor for policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on the 2018 National Defense Strategy, 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, and 2019 Missile Defense Review.
Outside of government service, Alden was the national security editor for American Affairs, a Lincoln fellow at the Claremont Institute, and project director at the Center for Naval Analyses. In private consulting, he served as managing director of the Rimland Strategies Group and manager of analysis at the Avascent Group.
Alden has an MA in political science from Johns Hopkins University, where he pursued doctoral research and taught courses on international relations. His BA is in political science and philosophy from Southern Illinois University.