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OpenAI hires former Army secretary Dan Driscoll for national security role
OpenAI hired former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll as senior counselor for national security modernization, a new role advising leadership on military and cyber uses of AI. Driscoll stepped down as Army secretary earlier this year.
OpenAI has hired former U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll as senior counselor for national security modernization, a newly created role. Driscoll will advise the company's leadership on how AI can be used to strengthen U.S. national security and cybersecurity, and he will work with outside partners on helping U.S. allies adopt the technology.
The hire puts a former service secretary inside the company at a time when governments are still writing the rules for military and intelligence use of AI. Driscoll's updated LinkedIn profile lists the position. OpenAI confirmed the appointment.
What the role covers
Driscoll will work with government officials, industry leaders, academic institutions and allied organizations to advance what OpenAI calls "democratic AI." He will also help internal teams understand how national security institutions actually operate, building on OpenAI's work on cyber resilience through its Daybreak program.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the U.S. has "an extraordinary opportunity to work with other countries to spread the adoption of democratic AI," and that Driscoll's appointment would help strengthen American leadership in the technology.
Driscoll framed the job around speed. "National security requirements are changing faster than at any time in the past fifty years," he said. He added that AI could cut paperwork, process information and get answers to national security staff more quickly.
"I'm joining OpenAI to help the U.S. and our allies put this technology to work responsibly, for the people who keep us safe," he said.
A background in military modernization
Driscoll stepped down as Army secretary earlier this year after months of reported tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. An Iraq war veteran, he pushed to modernize the U.S. military, including expanding access to drone and counter-drone technologies among U.S. allies, according to a previous Army announcement.
He also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv in November 2025 to discuss a U.S.-proposed peace plan aimed at ending the war with Russia, according to a statement from the Presidential Office of Ukraine.
The move follows a pattern of AI companies recruiting from defense and government. For agencies and contractors weighing AI procurement, the people on the other side of the table increasingly come from their own world. Teams tracking those shifts can find relevant material in these AI for Government Courses.
Why this matters for executives and policy teams
OpenAI now has a named executive whose job is to translate between national security agencies and a commercial AI lab. For government affairs, legal and communications teams, that means the company's positions on defense use, allied access and cyber resilience will be argued by someone who has run a military branch. Vendors and agencies preparing for those conversations should expect procurement questions to move from model capability to operational fit: what the technology does inside an existing command structure, and who is accountable when it fails. Policy staff who need grounding in those trade-offs can start with these AI Public Policy Courses.