Carol Kuntz

Carol Kuntz served in the United States national security community for more than 30 years. Her work particularly focused on identifying changes in the strategic environment and implementing new policies and programs given those changes. Her current teaching and research build on this experience. She serves as an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her research is focused on the policy implications of technological advances that enable the purposeful manipulation of genomes. Dr. Kuntz teaches at Georgetown and George Washington Universities on the policy implications of artificial intelligence. She also serves as a senior advisor at the Chertoff Group. At the end of the Cold War in 1989, Dr. Kuntz worked directly with the under secretary of defense for policy and the secretary of defense in crafting a new defense strategy to replace the post-World War II strategy of containment. For the five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Dr. Kuntz served as the homeland security advisor to the vice president of the United States, advising him on all aspects of homeland security matters. In the final assignment of her government career, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Dr. Kuntz sought to embed cutting-edge biotechnologies into the department’s countermeasure programs so as to defend against wholly novel biological threats, including threats posed by synthetic biology. Dr. Kuntz received her Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her dissertation demonstrated that changes in the nature of the biotechnologies and the strategic environment undercut the effectiveness of the classic biodefense strategy. She received her M.P.A from Princeton University and her B.A. from Cornell University, magna cum laude, with distinction in all subjects.