Chief Operating Officer, War on the Rocks
Nicholas Hanson is the Chief Operating Officer at War on the Rocks. He graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2011 with a B.S. in Arabic. He served as a ground intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years and deployed to East, Southeast, and South Asia. He continues to serve in the Marine Corps Reserve, supporting the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Joint Intelligence Operations Center. He previously worked at Vannevar Labs as a Mission Success and Mission Strategy Lead. He previously served as a White House intern and a fellow on the House of Representatives Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party. In May 2024, he graduated from the joint Harvard Kennedy School MPP & Harvard Business School MBA program. He grew up on a third-generation family farm in rural Illinois and currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia.