Several alumni of Koch foreign policy nonprofits have made it into the administration, which has led to some controversy.
The intelligence official tasked with preparing the President’s daily brief has urged greater “restraint” toward China, voiced staunch opposition to the use of tariffs, and said that “smart” foreign policy experts know that Taiwan is far less important to U.S. interests than many people say.
The official, Will Ruger, was recently appointed to the post of deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration, where he will oversee the intelligence community’s efforts to brief lawmakers, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence website.
Ruger is an Afghanistan war veteran and prominent libertarian foreign policy commentator who has held executive roles at several policy nonprofits funded by the political donor Charles Koch. He is one of Washington’s foremost proponents of foreign policy “restraint” — a term for a specific form of retrenchment advanced by Koch-network nonprofits.
His views on China, which are far more dovish than those held by other officials in the administration, are noteworthy, as the Trump team works to craft a response to Beijing’s trade abuses. Ruger’s affiliation with the Koch network is also significant in light of Trump’s comment, in a January Truth Social post, that he does not want to hire people who worked with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity group. Several Koch network foreign policy hands have joined the administration, and John Byers, an appointee to a post at the Pentagon, has previously opposed “belligerent military initiatives” aimed at China.
In a 2021 interview with Politico about a multi-million-dollar Koch-led PR campaign for libertarian foreign policy priorities, Ruger said of U.S. competition with China: “We think that Cold War II is the wrong approach.”
He voiced a similar perspective in an interview published at Quillette, an online journal. “I urge greater caution and restraint in regard to China because I think A2/AD technologies can help protect against some of the worst fears of the China hawks,” he said, referring to anti-aerial, access-denial weapons. “I also think buck-passing is an underrated strategy which would be difficult to implement if our rhetoric and our actions look too much like we are trying to create a Cold War II posture in which the U.S. agrees upfront to pay any price and bear any burden.”
While at Stand Together, he funded projects that reflected that perspective, playing a key role in establishing the Quincy Institute think tank, which has lobbied Congress to water down China-focused legislation. One former Quincy fellow, Rachel Odell, appeared on a webinar hosted by the think tank and argued that it is “dangerous” for Washington to attempt to maintain its military dominance in East Asia to deter Taiwan. The Quincy Institute was also Washington’s foremost proponent of the narrative that U.S. policy decisions regarding China caused an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes.
The right way to deter China, Ruger argued during a debate hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 2023, is to let America’s allies take the lead. He argued the position that America should not militarily defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, though he said that he supports some measures to turn Taiwan into a porcupine to deter an attack. Overall, Ruger has said elsewhere, Taiwan just doesn’t matter that much to U.S. interests.
“Esoteric truth? Taiwan is strategically a lot less important to the U.S. than foreign policy experts are willing to say. And the smart ones know it,” Ruger wrote in a September 2021 post to X.
That’s a sharp contrast with views voiced by other administration officials, such as Elbridge Colby, a prominent China hawk who serves as the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that “Taiwan’s fall would be a disaster.”
Ruger’s public comments on tariffs indicate that he is a robust proponent of free trade and strongly opposes the use of trade barriers. In a post on June 1, 2018, the day that Trump announced new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Ruger wrote: “Given what we know about the economics of trade, America First ought to include a robust free trade approach not protectionism. Tariffs are taxes on Americans! #freetrade”
The following month, he described his policy outlook: “Is ‘globalist’ the new word for realism and restraint in grand strategy, free trade, and trying to be an example to the world of our experiment in liberty and democracy by doing better here at home? #koch” Then, in a follow-up post, he wrote that he was being sarcastic about his use of the term “globalist.” He explained: “Realism and restraint, free trade, and being an exemplar — whatever we call that, that’s where our country should be and what people can call me.”
In October 2019, he voiced support for the World Trade Organization as a “seemingly forgotten institution that can help buttress U.S. interests and free trade.” Two months later, the Trump administration took steps to undermine its court system.
Several alumni of Koch foreign policy nonprofits have made it into the administration, which has led to some controversy. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that a Ruger ally, and fellow Koch-world alum, Dan Caldwell, had been placed on leave from his role as senior advisor to the secretary of defense and escorted out of the Pentagon amid an investigation into leaks. Ruger posted a thread in January saying that Caldwell would “loyally” serve the president.