United States National Security Council

• 1. Introduction

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  In August 2025, the Financial Times reported that the National Security Council had been drastically pared back during Donald Trump's second term. Dozens of foreign policy and national security experts had been pushed out of their jobs. An official quoted in that report said the traditional Washington foreign policy process led by the council had largely broken down. That verdict lands on a body that has shaped nearly every major American foreign policy decision since Harry Truman signed it into existence in 1947. The National Security Council sits inside the White House, as part of the Executive Office of the President. It brings together senior national security advisors and cabinet officials to help the president weigh national security, military, and foreign policy questions. Its reach stretches from the Korean War in the early 1950s through the more recent war on terror. How did a body meant to coordinate agencies end up authorizing kill lists, running disinformation campaigns, and creating offices for shipbuilding and climate diplomacy? And how did an institution built to keep Washington's foreign policy machine coordinated end up, by one 2025 account, disconnected from it?

• 2. Origins In Cold War Anxiety

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  On the 22nd of January 1946, Harry Truman signed an executive letter creating the National Intelligence Authority. It was tasked with overseeing the Central Intelligence Group, the CIA's forerunner. Its members included the secretary of state, first James F. Byrnes and then George C. Marshall. The secretary of war Robert P. Patterson and the secretary of the Navy James Forrestal also served on the body. William D. Leahy, Truman's personal representative and chief of staff to the commander in chief, rounded out the group.

  The National Security Act of 1947 replaced that arrangement with the council itself. Policymakers had concluded that State Department diplomacy alone could no longer contain the Soviet Union, given rising tension between the two countries. The Act was meant to coordinate the Army, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force, and the newly created Central Intelligence Agency. The goal was cooperation among those forces, not rivalry. A Reorganization Plan in 1949 then placed the council formally inside the Executive Office of the President. That same year, lawmakers passed the National Security Act Amendments of 1949, recorded at 63 Stat. 579 and later cited as 50 U.S.C. 401. The original 1947 statute itself carries the citation Public Law 235, recorded at 61 Stat. 496.

  By 1953, the council was already steering strategy against a specific rival. Under President Eisenhower, the NSC drafted three papers targeting the People's Republic of China. NSC 146 proposed backing Republic of China maritime raids and strikes on the Chinese mainland. NSC 148 called for fostering anti-communist Chinese factions both inside and outside the country. NSC 166 pushed strategies to deny the PRC full standing in the international community, on the theory that concessions would only strengthen the PRC. Within decades, the council's staff and reporting lines would themselves be rewritten again and again.

• 3. Rewriting The Chain Of Command

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  In 2004, the position of director of national intelligence was created as a new cabinet-level post. It took over responsibilities previously held by the director of central intelligence, the head of the CIA, overseeing and coordinating the wider intelligence community.

  On the 26th of May 2009, President Barack Obama merged two White House staffs into one. The staff supporting the Homeland Security Council and the staff supporting the National Security Council became a single National Security Staff. Both councils continued to exist by statute as separate bodies supporting the president, even after the merger of their staffs. The staff organization's name reverted to National Security Council Staff in 2014.

  A White House memorandum in January 2017 changed how two officials attended meetings. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence would join the Principals Committee only when matters concerning them arose. Both remained part of the full council regardless. The same reorganization made the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development a permanent member of the Deputies Committee. The change won moderate praise.

  On the 29th of January 2017, newly elected President Donald Trump restructured the Principals Committee. National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 again altered the same two officials' attendance. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus clarified the next day that they were still invited to attend meetings.

  In April 2017, a follow-up order, National Security Presidential Memorandum 4, reversed course again. The director of national intelligence and the Joint Chiefs chairman were required to attend Principals Committee meetings. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency joined as a regular attendee too. The USAID administrator again became a permanent member of the Deputies Committee, while the White House chief strategist was removed from the council altogether. Not every one of the council's powers shows up on an organizational chart, though; some of them are never made public at all.

• 4. Who Sits At The Table

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  As of 2021, the president chairs the council directly, as set by statute and National Security Memorandum-2. Five other statutory seats belong to the vice president and the secretaries of state, the treasury, defense, and energy. Five more seats are non-statutory. They belong to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The remaining non-statutory seats go to the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security, and the United States representative to the United Nations. Three advisors round out the group. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serves as military advisor. The director of national intelligence serves as intelligence advisor. The director of national drug control policy serves as drug policy advisor. The chief of staff to the president, the White House counsel, and the assistant to the president for economic policy are regularly invited to attend. The attorney general, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency attend only sometimes. They join when a meeting touches their specific responsibilities. Heads of other departments and agencies, along with other senior officials, are invited whenever the topic calls for it.

  The Principals Committee is the cabinet-level senior interagency forum for national security policy, convened and chaired by the national security advisor. Its regular attendees include the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of defense, the attorney general, and the secretary of energy. Sitting alongside them are the secretary of homeland security, the White House chief of staff, and the director of national intelligence. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA director also attend. So do the homeland security advisor and the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Several other officials may attend every Principals Committee meeting. These include the White House counsel and the deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs. Eligible to attend as well are the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the deputy national security advisor. So is the deputy national security advisor for strategy. The national security advisor to the vice president and the NSC executive secretary round out that list. When the committee considers international economic issues, it brings in additional officials. These are the secretary of commerce, the United States trade representative, and the assistant to the president for economic policy.

  The Policy Coordination Committees, established and directed by the Deputies Committee, handle the daily work of interagency coordination. They manage the development, implementation, and analysis of national security policy on behalf of both the Deputies Committee and the Principals Committee. Senior directors on the National Security Council staff chair these committees, sometimes alongside staff from the National Economic Council. Assistant secretary-level officials from the relevant department or agency serve as co-chairs. Not every group that answers to the council is a committee like these. Some, such as the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, exist for narrower, more clandestine work.

• 5. The Kill List

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  After the attacks of the 11th of September 2001, the council gained a grim new task. It began identifying people, including United States citizens, judged to be threats to national security. Those named go onto what is informally called a kill list. No public record of the decision, or of any operation carried out, is ever released. The council justifies these actions with two legal theories. First, Congress authorized military force against militants after the 2001 attacks. Second, international law permits a country to act in self-defense.

  Homeland Security Advisor John O. Brennan helped codify targeted killing criteria by creating the Disposition Matrix database. He once described the Obama administration's approach to lethal force directly, saying: 'in order to ensure that our counterterrorism operations involving the use of lethal force are legal, ethical, and wise, President Obama has demanded that we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards and processes.'

  Reuters reported that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, appeared on such a list and was killed as a result. His case remains one of the few instances where the list's usual secrecy briefly became public knowledge.

• 6. A Secret Campaign

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  According to a report by Reuters, the United States military ran a propaganda campaign in 2020 targeting China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine. Fake social media accounts falsely claimed the vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients, making it haram under Islamic law. The campaign was described as 'payback' for COVID-19 disinformation that China had aimed at the United States.

  In spring 2021, the National Security Council ordered the military to stop spreading anti-vaccine messages. The campaign nonetheless continued until summer 2021, when it finally came to an end. Unlike some of the council's other actions that year, this one left no lasting office or title behind.

• 7. The Vanishing Health Office

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  In 2016, responding to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the Obama administration created the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense inside the council. Its stated goal was 'to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.'

  In May 2018, John Bolton, freshly appointed to head the council under President Trump, restructured the organization in a way that eliminated the office. Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, the Sr. Director for Global Health Security and Biothreats, had led that office until the change. Remaining staff were reassigned to other NSC departments, and Ziemer resigned soon after, completing the office's elimination.

  Tim Morrison took over the resulting consolidated directorate, called counterproliferation and biodefense, in July 2018. It absorbed the health directorate's former duties along with arms control, nonproliferation, and weapons of mass destruction terrorism work. Morrison called the change a 'reduction of force,' rejected the word 'dissolved' as 'specious,' and described the office's earlier size as 'bloat.' 'That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017,' he said.

  At a February 2020 press conference, Trump defended the 2018 cuts on financial grounds. 'Some of the people we cut, they haven't been used for many, many years,' he said. No evidence supported that claim, since the team had existed only from 2016 to 2018. He continued: 'And rather than spending the money, and I'm a business person, I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them.' The team's size before the cuts was estimated at 430 people, though the 'thousands' Trump referenced also included reductions in the CDC's staff.

  In January 2021, President Joe Biden reinstated the directorate and appointed Elizabeth Cameron as Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense. Cameron had held that same position before, under Obama, and briefly again under Trump. The office had sat vacant for nearly three years, a gap that closed just as a new administration began reshaping the council's other seats.

• 8. New Additions

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  During his presidential transition, President-elect Joe Biden announced a new National Security Council seat: the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. Former Secretary of State John Kerry became the first person to hold that position.

  In a speech to a joint session of Congress on the 4th of March 2025, Donald Trump proposed a new United States Office of Shipbuilding. It was to be developed within the council itself. The office was part of a broader executive order meant to revive the American shipbuilding industry against China's dominant position in global maritime trade. Proposed measures included raising wages for shipyard workers and directing the Department of Government Efficiency to review federal procurement actions. Whether the shipbuilding office outlasts the political administration that proposed it remains an open question, one that will play out far from the council's usual conference rooms.