astronomy

Kevin Harrington (national security advisor)

Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) rather than just read about it. In short: Kevin Harrington is an American physicist, hedge fund manager and government official, who serves as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council (NSC). Harrington was previously a managing director at Thiel Macro LLC (also a managing director or principal at Thiel Capital, and before that managing director at Clarium Capital) and a close associate of Peter Thiel.

Key takeaways

Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kevin Harrington is an American physicist, hedge fund manager and government official, who serves as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council (NSC). Harrington was previously a managing director at Thiel Macro LLC (also a managing director or principal at Thiel Capital, and before that managing director at Clarium Capital) and a close associate of Peter Thiel.

Education and early career Harrington graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and physics from the University of Idaho. He was a Goldwater Scholar and conducted mathematics research for the Department of Defense. He later pursued doctoral studies in physics at Stanford University as a NSF Fellow and consulted for the Stanford-based Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) on fissile material security and critical infrastructure protection. When at Stanford, he wrote for the Stanford Review. He is noted as having served as the senior class president in a 1995 Stanford news release.

Business career Harrington worked at Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital Management and later as managing director and head of research at Thiel Macro LLC, a San Francisco–based global macro hedge fund founded by Peter Thiel. He also worked at Thiel Capital. Harrington has been credited as a co-author of the original business plan for PayPal. He was trusted by Thiel, who considered him his alter-ego and intellectual sparring partner. Harrington said, "Peter is my foil, and I’m his foil."”

Government service After Trump won his first term, on Thiel's recommendation, Harrington served in Trump's "landing team" at the Department of Commerce. According to Rob Lalka, he was involved in determining which positions political appointees would hold during this period. In February 2017, Harrington was appointed by the White House as deputy assistant to the President for strategic planning, serving the National Security Council. Although he began with a midtier role, he was given the task of rewriting the National Security Strategy. Lalka criticized Harrington's work at this early stage as showing inexperience and dangerously pandering to Russia's interests, specifically concerning Harrington's advice that sanctions on Russian oil be lifted and U.S. troops withdraw from Eastern Europe. Later he moved to a more senior role. A number of sources link the role of Harrington's and some other tech-associated figures in the government with Thiel's influence, Palantir, and the broader alignment of the data-driven tech industry and politics. In 2017, Just Security noted that the choice of Harrington for a position of the second highest rank in the White House seemed to integrate a model used by Thiel in business with politics at the strategic level, which emphasized vision rather than strong grounding in the profession. In 2018, commenting on Michael Kratsios and Harrington's appointments, TriplePundit writes that, "Combined with the Palantir activity, all of this seems to indicate no small degree of conflict between Thiel’s role in business and his influence on US policy making." In Trump's second term, Harrington again serves on the NSC as senior director. In September 2025, Politico reported that Harrington "is departing his role as NSC senior director for strategic planning, where he was helping to oversee the finishing touches on Trump’s new National Security Strategy." A White House official stated that Harrington would transition to the Department of Defense, though his specific role was not disclosed. In 2025, the Brazilian newspaper Brasil de Fato (described by The New York Times as part of a "global web of Chinese propaganda") described Harrington's role as part of a broader "nationalist-conservative", "Christian-traditionalist" and anti-China alignment within Trump's foreign policy apparatus, which is also connected to the strategic placement of "Thiel acolytes" in key national security positions. The outlet writes that, "there are no right-wing realists on the NSC."

See also Clarium Capital Management National Security Council (United States) Stanford Review

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kevin Harrington (national security advisor)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kevin Harrington (national security advisor)

In research: Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American hedge fund managers, American physicists, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) in simple terms?

Why does Kevin Harrington (national security advisor) matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kevin Harrington (national security advisor)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kevin Harrington (national security advisor).