Dr. C.S. Eliot Kang is a former Acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation, and treaty negotiator with the personal rank of ambassador. For over two decades, he has shaped global governance on nonproliferation, nuclear energy, and strategic trade.
Dr. Kang played a central role in countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, providing key diplomatic leadership during the Six-Party Talks on North Korea and the multilateral effort to refer Iran’s nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council. In 2021, he oversaw the five-year extension of the New START Treaty and led State Department participation in sensitive deliberations preceding the launch of AUKUS, a trilateral pact to enhance Australia’s naval capabilities through nuclear-powered submarines. He also advanced peaceful nuclear cooperation with strategic partners—including Japan, France, the UAE, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore—and pioneered diplomatic frameworks to safeguard emerging dual-use technologies such as AI, advanced semiconductors, and quantum computing. His leadership has helped launch plurilateral initiatives, shape global arms control, nonproliferation, and civil-nuclear cooperation dialogues, and guide policy responses to authoritarian techno-nationalism. Dr. Kang joined the State Department in 2003 as a William C. Foster Fellow and served in the Bureaus of Political-Military Affairs and Arms Control. He is a recipient of numerous State Department honors, including the Distinguished Honor Award and two Presidential Rank Awards—Meritorious (2018) and Distinguished (2022). A former tenured professor, he taught international security at the University of Pennsylvania and Northern Illinois University, and held fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution.
He earned his Ph.D. from Yale, studied at Princeton, and graduated summa cum laude from Cornell. Earlier in his career, he worked in investment banking at Dillon, Read & Co., and was elected to life membership in the Council on Foreign Relations.