Mike Kuiken

About

Mike Kuiken serves as a commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, following a tenure spanning nearly twenty-three years in the US Senate, where he served as national security advisor to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, holding the Senate’s most senior national security staff role.

As a staff member of the “Gang of Eight,” Kuiken played a key role in shaping critical national security policies and providing oversight on intelligence operations, particularly on the most sensitive matters, for over seven years. He also led efforts to advance America’s competitiveness in critical technology sectors, playing key roles in the passage of landmark legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act; in establishing the Senate's bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Insight Forums; and in securing significant process reforms in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Prior to joining Senator Schumer’s team, Kuiken spent more than a decade on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) staff as a professional staff member. His portfolio on SASC included the Middle East, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere, as well as counterterrorism and intelligence policy.  

During his time on the SASC, he worked for two giants of the Senate: Jack Reed and the late Senator Carl Levin.  His major accomplishments on SASC included a massive expansion of congressional oversight of sensitive military operations; several major rounds of legislation that expanded sanctions on Iran; and once-in-a-generation reform of the Department of Defense’s security assistance authorities—some of which have been key enablers of defense support to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

Over the course of his career, Kuiken has been on the front lines of every consequential national security issue: war on terrorism, wars in in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, Arab Spring, war in Syria, rise of the Islamic State, Benghazi, rise of China, Russia’s interference in American democracy, Taiwan, and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. He has traveled to more than seventy-five countries, leading staff and congressional delegation visits to capitals and the front lines. He has journeyed to every conflict zone since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  

He most recently led the Majority Leader’s delegations to the People’s Republic of China, Israel, and Ukraine. He has also played an integral role in two decades’ worth of defense appropriations bills and national defense authorization acts, the two most consequential pieces of national security legislation passed annually by the Senate.