Dave Anthony was a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, where he focuses on the future of conflict and warfare as well as the defense and security implications of global trends. Anthony assists the Scowcroft Center in creatively thinking about what warfare will look like, how it will be fought, and what strategies will be required to deter and defeat adversaries.
A writer, director, and producer, Anthony is best known for his pioneering work on the “Call of Duty” video game franchise. In 2020, Anthony founded Deviation Games, a video game development studio focused on creating a groundbreaking new franchise. Anthony moved to Los Angeles in 2004 to produce “Call of Duty” for Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox. In 2010, he wrote the screenplay for and directed “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” which was, for a time, the world’s bestselling video game and was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2011 as the best video game story ending of all time. Anthony also later wrote and directed the sequel “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” which grossed one billion dollars in just fifteen days, breaking the world record as the fastest billion-dollar gross in the history of entertainment. In 2014, Anthony formed Prisoner Six Productions, a Los Angeles based production company developing both television and movie projects. In addition to working with many senior military experts and veterans including Lt. Colonel Oliver North, he has directed a host of A-list celebrities such as Ed Harris, Gary Oldman, Sam Worthington, Kiefer Sutherland, Evangeline Lilly, Jimmy Kimmel, and Michael Keaton.
Born in Liverpool, England, Anthony received a first-class honors degree from Lancaster University in computer science, majoring in artificial intelligence and natural language processing.