Anthony Ruggiero is a Senior Vice President at American Global Strategies leading the firm’s Economic Security and Financial Services Practice. He also co-leads the AGS election and political analysis initiative. Anthony helps clients across multiple sectors – defense, aerospace, maritime, technology, finance, private equity and non-profit – using his deep understanding of the administration, as well as sanctions, export controls, and other financial tools used by the U.S. government. He provides clients with tailored analyses of U.S. government actions, and potential opportunities, vulnerabilities and challenges in a region or specific country. The Economic Security and Financial Services Practice also works closely with the Geopolitical Risk Assessment and Forecasting Practice and the International Practice to provide analyses of emerging issues.
Anthony served in the United States Government for nearly 20 years in both Democratic and Republican administrations. In the first Trump administration, he was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Counterproliferation and Biodefense (2019-2021). In this capacity, he advised the President, National Security Advisor, Deputy National Security Advisor, and White House leadership on a wide range of issues, including counterproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, nonproliferation, export controls, conventional arms transfers, biodefense, arms control, chemical weapons use in Syria, proliferation issues in Iran and North Korea, Ebola outbreaks in Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the investigation into COVID-19 origins.
Before being promoted to senior director, he served as the NSC Director for North Korea (2018-2019) where he worked on the President’s maximum pressure policy and summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Anthony was a Foreign Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Marco Rubio, Deputy Director and then Director (now a Deputy Assistant Secretary position) in the Office of Global Affairs in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the Department of the Treasury, and served more than 13 years in various positions at the Department of State, including as an intelligence analyst and Chief of the Defensive Measures and WMD Finance Team.
He was senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program and a senior fellow at FDD. Anthony’s research focused on U.S. sanctions policy; weapons of mass destruction programs in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Russia, and China; COVID-19 origins; and Chinese money laundering organizations’ role in America’s fentanyl crisis. Anthony’s research has been cited by Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, Politico, and the New York Post. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, NBC News, and The Hill.
Anthony was sanctioned by Russia in 2024.
He is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice and the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Anthony received a Master of Science in National Security Strategy from the National War College, a Master of Public and International Affairs with a focus on International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public and International Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Duquesne University.