Austin Long joined CNSP as Senior Fellow on July 1, 2025. Dr. Long was previously appointed to the Senior Executive Service in October 2022. As DD StS, Dr. Long is responsible for the formulation of Joint Staff positions and recommendations regarding strategy, plans and policy for strategic deterrence, space, cyberspace, electromagnetic spectrum operations, information operations, nuclear, missile defense, countering weapons of mass destruction, subsea and seabed warfare, arms control, and other international negotiations. He was previously Vice Deputy Director for Strategic Stability.
Prior to joining the Joint Staff, Dr. Long was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He was an analyst and adviser to the U.S. military in Iraq (2007-2008) and Afghanistan (2011 and 2013). In 2014-2015, he was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in Nuclear Security, serving in the Joint Staff J5.
Dr. Long’s research has appeared in International Security, Security Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of Cold War Studies, Orbis, the Journal of Cybersecurity, Texas National Security Review, and Survival. He is also the author of The Soul of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the United States and United Kingdom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016) and co-editor (with Charles L. Glaser and Brian Radzinsky) of Managing U.S. Nuclear Operations in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2022).
Dr. Long received his B.S. from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Contact: aglong@mit.edu
Matthew Sharp is a Senior Nuclear Fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy (CNSP) within MIT’s Security Studies Program. He served from 2009 to 2025 at the U.S. Department of State, most recently as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary (A/DAS) for Nuclear Affairs in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability. A career member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service, Matthew served in a number of positions in the State Department’s Bureaus of Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and European Affairs, including as the Deputy Counselor for IAEA Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna from 2016-2020. Matthew served as the Director for Iran Nuclear Issues at President Biden’s National Security Council staff from 2021-2022. Matthew was a 2008-2009 postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Managing the Atom Program and holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago.
Contact: msharp@mit.edu