National Security Council (NSC)

Last updated

29th November 2024

As of August 2025, the National Security Council (NSC) is undergoing restructuring. This guide reflects NSC’s structure as of January 2025.

This profile focuses on the National Security Council (NSC) within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). For a more general overview of EOP and its relevance to AI and biosecurity, see:

Executive Office of the President (EOP)

EOP is a group of offices and councils that support the president in executing their agenda domestically and internationally. EOP advises the president, coordinates policy development among federal agencies, and guides policy implementation.

Overview

The National Security Council (NSC) coordinates the government’s national security enterprise and advises the president on national security matters by convening Cabinet members, agency heads, and senior officials for deliberation across multiple levels of government. As part of the Executive Office of the President (EOP), NSC is responsible for aggregating inputs from the government’s vast array of defense and intelligence bodies; coordinating national security policy implementation among agencies; and designing short- and long-term national security strategies. NSC’s remit spans homeland security, global public health, international economics, science and technology, cybersecurity, climate, immigration, and more.

NSC is heavily involved in AI and biosecurity policy given their significant impact on national security. This includes addressing threats such as the misuse of synthetic biology or autonomous weapons systems and advancing the use of AI for intelligence analysis and threat detection. NSC works closely with agencies like the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Commerce, the intelligence community, and others to ensure a coordinated approach to managing both the risks of emerging technologies and their integration into national defense strategies.

Background on NSC

Government context: NSC is the largest EOP policy councils and is led by the national security advisor
Main activities: advising the president on matters of national security; convening officials for deliberation across multiple levels of government, from assistant secretaries to deputy secretaries to Cabinet officials; integrating domestic, foreign, and military policies related to national security; facilitating cooperation between military services and other agencies to develop and implement national security policy
Budget: ~$18 million; this excludes the majority of NSC staff, most of which are temporary detailees from other government agencies
Staff: ~250-400 (up from around 40 in the early 1990s, with most growth after the 9/11 terrorist attacks); NSC’s size has been controversial, with many critics arguing it has grown too big.¹ Most policy staff (typically ~80-90%) are on temporary rotations from other government agencies or, especially for more senior roles, hired as political appointees (10-20%). Most of the staff work on policy coordination, but there are also many administrative and legal staff.²
Brief history: the 1947 National Security Act established NSC as the primary coordinating body for national security and foreign policy decisions, a role it has maintained despite variations in its influence and structure across administrations. Each president sets his or her policy on organizing NSC with a memorandum, typically enacted very early in the term.³

Policy councils

NSC is one of four main White House policy councils assisting the president in making policy decisions, alongside the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Domestic Policy Council (DPC), and the National Economic Council (NEC).⁴ Many other EOP offices also serve advisory roles to the president, such as the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

NSC is the biggest EOP policy council, with several hundred staff compared to a typical range of 30-35 for NEC, 60-70 for DPC, and 40-150 for OSTP. The other largest EOP office is the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has around 500 staff and oversees the federal government’s budget, among other tasks. NSC works closely with all these other EOP components in aligning the work of the federal government with the president’s priorities.

Organizational structure

NSC has two components: the council itself and the council staff. As a council, NSC is chaired by the president, and its regular attendees include the vice president, department and agency heads like the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, and Energy, as well as other senior officials. But when this profile refers to “NSC,” it will typically refer to the NSC staff, not the council members.

Directorates

NSC is organized into directorates, teams of typically 5-12 staff that are either functional (e.g. technology, human rights, arms control, counterterrorism) or regional (e.g. Asia, Africa, Middle East). The core NSC support infrastructure remains fairly consistent across administrations, including teams dedicated to administrative and legal issues, which are highly important to NSC functions.

But incoming presidential administrations typically reorganize NSC’s structure and roles to reflect their priorities and perspectives; under President Biden, this happened through the National Security Memorandum 2 (NSM-2). Issue directorates often reflect the president’s policy priorities, making them more temporary than regional directorates that monitor and advise on a dedicated region of the world.

Within EOP, directorates are often designated with “#” and an abbreviation. For example, in the Biden administration, the directorate for Technology and National Security was #TechNatSec, pronounced “pound tech nat sec” (and the China directorate would be “pound China,” etc.).

There are no official org charts of NSC’s staff structure, but some unofficial mock-ups of NSC staff organization have been prepared by non-government entities (see figure below for an approximation of President Obama’s 2015 NSC staff).

The names, focus areas, and organization of the teams and directorates have changed several times since 2015. For example, the Biden administration was the first to create a dedicated directorate for Technology and National Security, reflecting the growing prominence of technology issues in global affairs. Prior administrations had attempted to organize emerging technology issues in other ways (see this paper for context). Another example is the Obama administration establishing a directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which the first Trump administration reorganized and the Biden administration re-established.

NSC directorates conduct a combination of responsive and proactive work. Since only around 150 NSC staff cover all events worldwide (with the rest of the staff focusing on support functions such as IT), much of their work involves coordinating the US government’s response to national security-related events and crises (“putting out fires”). While functional directorates, such as those covering technology and biosecurity, often have more capacity for long-term planning and agenda-setting, they also frequently have to respond to world events.

Leadership and staff

NSC employs ~250-400 staff, though this varies greatly by administration. One source estimates George H.W. Bush’s NSC staff at 50, Clinton’s at 100, George W. Bush’s at 200, and Obama’s at around 400 see NSC staff growth over time in the graph below).

Around 80-90% of NSC staff are career government staff: around 65 staff are employed directly by NSC, and the rest are mainly temporary detailees on rotation from other federal agencies, especially (but not exclusively) from national security-related agencies like DOD, DHS, State, and the intelligence community (IC). The remaining 10-20% of NSC staff are political appointees, typically serving in senior roles like senior director or deputy national security advisor.

Around half of NSC staff provide legal and legislative support, and the other half work on policy. The policy staff is divided roughly equally between regional and functional directorates.

While the allocation and titles of NSC staff change over time (just as the focus of directorates shifts within and across administrations), the overall leadership and staff structure typically stays consistent:

The National Security Advisor (formally referred to as the “Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs” or APSNA) leads the NSC staff; they are presidentially appointed without Senate confirmation.
There are typically 3-5 Deputy National Security Advisors who report to the National Security Advisor and oversee several teams and portfolios in the NSC staff.
Next are Senior Directors leading particular directorates. These are often political appointees, though some are civil servants on detail; they typically report to a deputy national security advisor or senior staffers with overlapping portfolios.
The directorates consist of several Directors, who report to a Senior Director. Most Directors are agency employees on detail to NSC for 1-2 years, though a few are political appointees.
Some teams are supported by Special Assistants (or policy advisors), the junior-most role in the directorates. A special assistant typically does more administrative work, but sometimes involves a small substantive policy portfolio under a director. Special assistants are often detailees, but can also be political appointees.

Managing the interagency process

The NSC staff’s main function is to coordinate the “interagency process,” harmonizing many executive agencies and offices to have a uniform national security and foreign policy that reflects the president’s priorities.

The interagency process follows a clear and consistent structure, though some of the terminology can shift across administrations. Here are a list and figure of the four key working levels:

Overview of the NSC interagency process

Much of the staff work is done at the interagency policy committee (IPC) level (called policy coordination committee or PCC in some administrations). IPCs are typically chaired by an NSC senior director and attended by assistant secretaries and/or under secretaries and their support staff from relevant agencies.
If an issue can’t be resolved at the sub-IPC or IPC level, it will be raised to the Deputies Committee (DP), which is typically chaired by a deputy national security advisor and involves deputy heads of departments.
The hardest problems and most important policies rise to the level of the Principals Committee (PC), chaired by the National Security Advisor and involving cabinet secretaries and select other senior officials like the White House chief of staff.
Finally, decisions are signed off by the president, who may either have a personal view on the issue that is taken into account during the process or may simply sign off on the recommendation that emerges from this interagency process.

Other EOP policy councils, such as the Domestic Policy Council, run similar interagency processes for their issues, though they are typically less formalized than NSC’s. Staff from many other EOP components are also involved in NSC-led processes or occasionally co-lead processes (e.g. NSC and OSTP might collaborate on certain issues at the intersection of technology and national security).

NSC and AI policy

As one of the federal government’s main coordinating bodies, NSC is involved in many policy initiatives at the intersection of AI and national security. NSC staff substantially contributed to President Biden’s 2024 National Security Memorandum on AI, the 2023 Executive Order on AI, the 2023 Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of AI and Autonomy, and bilateral initiatives such as the EU-US Trade and Technology Council working groups on AI, AI safety dialogues with China, and many others.

Functional NSC directorates typically lead on emerging technology issues like AI, though their existence or structure can vary greatly by administration. In the Biden administration, the key directorate for AI policy was Technology and National Security, led by Senior Director Tarun Chhabra. As of late 2024, it is still to be determined how the incoming Trump administration will organize the functional components of AI work within the NSC.

Regional directorates are also involved with bilateral and multilateral initiatives on AI: the bilateral dialogues with China would involve the China directorate, and the EU-US Trade and Technology Council would involve the Europe directorate. When issues overlap multiple directorates, who leads and how collaborative or competitive directorates are with each other depends a lot on the personalities, relationships, and relative influence of the Senior Directors and other relevant senior NSC staff. These dynamics can also shift significantly over time, even within the same administration, as staff rotate in and out and teams and portfolios are reorganized in response to world events.

NSC and biosecurity policy

NSC plays a crucial role in coordinating US federal biosecurity policy where it overlaps with national security. Under President Biden, NSC primarily oversaw these issues through its directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which focused on safeguarding the nation against biological threats, including pandemics, bioterrorism, and the misuse of biotechnology.

NSC helps integrate biosecurity efforts across federal agencies, ensuring a cohesive national strategy, and it engages in international partnerships to address global health risks. In the Biden administration, NSC developed the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan and a corresponding national security memorandum (NSM) to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security. NSC also contributed to the 2021 American Pandemic Preparedness Plan and, following Biden’s Executive Order on AI, co-chaired the committee that produced the 2024 Framework on Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening. In addition, NSC led the development of 2024 implementation guidance for US policy on the oversight of dual-use research of concern (DURC) and pathogens with enhanced pandemic potential (PEPP).

While functional directorates will likely continue to lead on biosecurity policy, their structure may continue to evolve. For example, the first Trump administration reorganized the bio directorate after the Obama administration, which in turn had reorganized from the Bush administration. Regional directorates may also be involved for diplomatic and security issues involving specific countries, such as concerns about bioweapons development in North Korea, Russia, China, and others.

Working at NSC

NSC staff positions are among the most prestigious and demanding roles in government. Most NSC staff are temporary detailees from other federal agencies—frequently State, DOD, DOE, USAID, CDC, DHS, and the intelligence community. NSC directors often send out recruiting calls to relevant agencies to fill available spots. Qualified detailee candidates are frequently collaborative interagency partners who are subject-matter experts in the issue area required, often with prior experience representing their agency to the White House and with strategic-level priorities.

All NSC positions require high-level security clearances (typically TS/SCI). Roles come with intense workloads and often high turnover, typically lasting 12-18 months, with some staff departing sooner due to burnout or agency-imposed limits on detail assignments.

There are two main pathways to joining NSC:

Detail assignments: More commonly, current government employees can try to secure a rotation to NSC as a detailee by working through their agency’s channels.
Political appointments: For political appointees, entry usually requires strong political connections to the current administration. These positions are often filled by politically connected subject matter experts, occasionally including early-career specialists with strong networks (see here for more information on hiring authorities for term appointments).

Special assistants or Directors can sometimes be detailed externally through a university, nonprofit, or fellowship program. However, this is rare, as available seats are limited, highly competitive, and generally require prior government experience including involvement in complex interagency processes (especially at the Director level and beyond).

NSC’s relatively few long-term career civil servants (as opposed to temporary detailees or political appointees) typically serve in human resources, operations, and other administrative support roles.