Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst.

He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, and The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World; a contributor for MSNBC; a senior advisor to former president Barack Obama; and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018.

From 2009–17, Ben served as a speechwriter and deputy national security advisor to President Obama. In that capacity, he participated in all of President Obama’s key decisions, oversaw the President’s national security communications and public diplomacy, and led the secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalise relations between the US and Cuba. His work has also been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. A native New Yorker, Ben has a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A from New York University.