David Aaron

Biography

Ambassador David L. Aaron is a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation. He formerly served on the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute Board of Overseers and as director of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy. He is a former deputy national security advisor, ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, under secretary of commerce for international trade, and special White House envoy for cryptography. His other government positions included Foreign Service assignments to NATO, the UN, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee and was the National Security Council staff member responsible for nuclear strategy and arms control. Ambassador Aaron also worked in the private sector as an investment banker and advisor to a Washington law firm. He has written three novels published in ten languages, and wrote the PBS special The Lessons of the Gulf War. His most recent monograph is In Their Own Words: Voices of Jihad (RAND Corporation, 2008). Aaron received his L.L.D. from Occidental College and his M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.