Former NSA Director Nakasone opens new institute at Vanderbilt to train ‘right type of leader’

Retired Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone opened a new Institute of National Security at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on Wednesday, with a plan to train the next generation of national security professionals.

The former leader of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command is eager to fill the personnel needs of the federal workforce.

“With a culture of collaborating across disciplines to solve tough challenges, an ethos rooted in service and a long history of partnering with the defense and aerospace sector, Vanderbilt University and our institute are uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on protecting the United States and our military service people while we prepare the right type of leader for a new era of national security,” Gen. Nakasone said in a statement.

Vanderbilt touted the new institute as building upon a regularly held summit on conflict and emerging threats it has hosted since 2021 that has attracted the leadership of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and Pentagon among others. The institute plans to create more opportunities for such gatherings.

The Gen. Nakasone-led institute will be housed in Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering, but the university said students, faculty and staff from across the university will participate.

“We need military officers that understand cyberspace and engineers that understand national security,” Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said in a statement. “We need interdisciplinary approaches that bring together diverse lenses of law, computer science and engineering. That’s precisely what we do [at] Vanderbilt.”

Vanderbilt envisions the institute as capable of addressing a “talent crisis” in national security. The university estimated that 60% of the current national security workforce will retire within the next decade while only 7% are under 30 years old.

“Our institute will harness this generational synergy to not only address current challenges but also create the future of collaborative national security leaders that approach problems with a multidisciplinary approach,” Gen. Nakasone said. “National security offers students a career with a broader sense of purpose and a chance to be part of something much larger than themselves.”

The university said the institute received initial funding from Discovery Vanderbilt, a school-run investment fund supporting research and innovation initiatives. Discovery Vanderbilt spent more than $50 million in 2022-2023, according to the university’s website.