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The Beinart Notebook · Jul 31, 2026

Thomas Wright on His Time on Biden’s National Security Council

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Peter Beinart · The Beinart Notebook

Our guest is Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and frequent contributor to the Atlantic who served as senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

Thomas is a smart guy who sees Israel-Palestine, and foreign policy more generally, very differently than I do. I think it was a valuable conversation.

Questions I posed include:

  • Shouldn’t Biden officials involved in supporting genocide in Israel be disqualified from future Democratic administrations?

  • Given all the indications that Israel was committing massive war crimes, how could you think it was moral for the Biden administration to continue sending Israel weapons?

  • Isn’t America’s position on Taiwan a bluff?

  • Did the Biden administration prioritize climate change in its dealings with China?

  • Isn’t it a problem that people who are paid by defense contractors have such a large role in making US foreign policy?

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