David A. Brown

David A. Brown, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired), is a strategist, educator, and national security practitioner with more than four decades of military and civilian experience spanning strategy, irregular warfare, operational planning, and professional military education. He is the Managing Principal of Delphi Strategic, a national security advisory firm focused on strategy, emerging capabilities, and the intersection of commercial innovation and national security.

Brown served 30 years in the U.S. Army in a career that included nuclear weapons, strategic and operational planning, and combat service in DESERT STORM and IRAQI FREEDOM. His assignments included service in Bosnia and Kosovo and as Senior Military Advisor to the 2nd Iraqi Army Division in Mosul. A graduate of the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), he planned and advised operations at battalion, brigade, division, and theater levels.

Following his Army career, Brown spent more than two decades at the U.S. Naval War College teaching and applying strategy to contemporary national security challenges. He taught in the Strategy and Policy Department and the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School and later served as Executive Director of the Advanced Strategist Program and Director of the Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG). His work focused particularly on the relationship between strategic theory and practice, irregular and political warfare, strategic competition, and the development of senior military strategists and operational planners. His work also included research, teaching, and advising with special operations forces.

Brown has designed and led conferences, workshops, and strategic engagements for U.S. and international military and national security audiences and has written and spoken extensively on strategy and irregular warfare. He formerly hosted CIWAG’s The Trident podcast and co-authored its 2025 policy paper on seabed warfare.