Former Pentagon Think Tank Director Joins Anthropic as Strategist-in-Residence

James Baker, who led the Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment from 2015 to 2025, has joined Anthropic as a "strategist-in-residence," the AI company announced Friday.

Baker will lead analysis of how artificial intelligence is affecting U.S. institutions and the country's competition with China, according to the company.

The Office of Net Assessment, often called the "Pentagon's think tank," was established in 1973 by policy strategist Andrew Marshall during the Nixon administration. Using a data-driven, "system-of-systems" methodology, the office sought to forecast how broad trends — spanning technology, labor, economics, and the environment — would affect the military over the long term.

In that capacity, Baker advised defense secretaries and national security advisors on the strategic implications of emerging technology. He had earlier served on the Joint Staff and in other advisory roles.

The Trump administration temporarily shuttered ONA in March 2025, citing cuts to basic research not immediately applicable to weapons development. A smaller version of the office was reinstated in October 2025.

Baker joins Anthropic at a complicated moment for the company's relationship with the federal government. The White House designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk in March after company executives declined to make their tools available for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens or to guide fully autonomous weapons. The company is currently in a six-month withdrawal from federal service, as ordered by President Trump.

In April, Anthropic announced it would limit the release of a new AI tool called Mythos to a small number of federal agencies and corporations to help identify cyber vulnerabilities, the company said.

Despite that backdrop, Baker described the challenge of adapting to artificial intelligence in sweeping terms. "We aren't spending enough time thinking about the implications of recursive self-improvement," he said, referring to intelligent systems that improve themselves far faster than their creators anticipate.

"The greatest risk is the long-term viability of present institutions in war and in peace," Baker added. "That's one of the questions I came to Anthropic to work on. It's a multi-decade structural — even civilizational — problem."

Baker also said the United States has "a tight time window to adapt" to what he characterized as a civilizational challenge posed by AI.

During its final decade, ONA worked to understand the implications of accelerating artificial intelligence on institutions that Congress has been slow to modernize. A 2016 summary study identified a "Cambrian explosion" in robotics and AI that would make warfare cheaper and faster, eroding the advantage of expensive investments in platforms such as $90 million jets — a trend now visible in Ukraine's use of low-cost drones against Russian naval and air defense assets.

Baker said the national-security effects of AI extend well beyond the military, and that only by appreciating the vulnerability of all institutions — including the Defense Department — will society be able to adapt to what is coming.

His appointment signals that Anthropic is deepening its engagement with long-range strategic and geopolitical questions even as its formal relationship with the federal government remains constrained.

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