Lieutenant Colonel Kai Thaxton

About

Lieutenant Colonel Kai Thaxton is a career US Army officer who has spent nearly thirty years in airborne infantry and special operations units. He has conducted combat operations, security force assistance, foreign internal defense, and partner capacity-building missions throughout the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

During his fellowship, Thaxton will examine the factors shaping American firms’ willingness to invest in the US defense industrial base, with particular emphasis on artificial intelligence, efficient data transfer in austere conditions, and the development of a US-based unmanned-systems enterprise. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.