Colin Carroll Biography
Colin Carroll is a chief of Staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg. He was suspended on April 16, 2025 just a day after two other other political appointees Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, the Defense Department’s deputy chief of staff were placed on leave following a probe into potential leaks of sensitive information.
According to the officials, the leaks under investigation include military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon to discuss China and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine
This comes after Pete Hegseth and other senior administration officials face ongoing scrutiny for the handling of sensitive information. Case in point, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of Atlantic was added to an unclassified group chat on Signal in which numerous key advisers to Trump discussed plans for a U.S. military attack on militants in Yemen. Hegseth disclosed details about the military operation before it occurred. He has however denied that what he shared on the group chat contained classified material.
Colin Carroll Qualification
Colin graduated with a degree in Aerospace Engineering from the United States Naval Academy and was ommissioned into the United States Marine Corps as a Ground Intelligence Officer. He also holds a Master of Arts in Security Studies from Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Carroll is a Comat Veteran
Caroll is a Marine Corps reservist and a combat veteran. He was eployed to Afghanistan as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom four times. He has served as a U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Officer serving as the Special Activities Planner at the Marine Corps Information Operations Center. He has filled billets as a Force Reconnaissance Platoon Commander and Reconnaissance Company Executive Officer for 2d Reconnaissance Battalion, the Staff Intelligence Officer for 2d Battalion 9th Marines, and as the Regional Command South West Information Operations Targeteer.
Carroll Career
After leaving active duty Colin joined theDepartment of Defense as a federal civilian, where he spent five years working on hard intelligence and information problems in the Pacific theater.
In 2017 he became a plank member of Project Maven, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security’s premier Artificial Intelligence capability development project, where he acted as the Deputy for Engineering and Integration.
He transitioned to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and was the technical project manager for a major program at the JAIC called Smart Sensor, a high endurance autonomous Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance platform. In 2020 he went back to federal service as a High Quality Expert and served as the JAIC’s inaugural Chief Operations Officer.
In 2021, he joined Applied Intuition, which enables autonomous vehicles
through simulation development and validation, as the head of government business before leaving in June 2023 to join Anduril Industries, a defense contractor that specializes in autonomous systems, on ‘Strategy and Growth’.