Securing America’s Future Energy will announce Avery Ash as its incoming CEO on Monday, its first new leader in more than two decades.
Securing America’s Future Energy is set to announce Avery Ash as its incoming CEO on Monday, the first new leader of the energy security group in more than two decades.
Robbie Diamond, who founded SAFE in 2004 to push the U.S. to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, will become its executive chair.
Ash held leading roles at the American Automobile Association and transportation analytics company INRIX before joining SAFE in 2023 as senior vice president of government affairs. He also led SAFE’s Coalition for Reimagined Mobility.
In an exclusive interview with POLITICO ahead of the announcement, Ash said SAFE is keeping its focus on lessening reliance on foreign supply chains, though its emphasis on energy has shifted since the shale revolution made the U.S. a net oil exporter.
The group is now focused on critical minerals policy and pushing the adoption of technologies with both defense and commercial applications, he said. That includes drones, driverless cars and advanced batteries.
Ash said SAFE is better positioned than most organizations in Washington to take on the Trump era because its focus on energy security is now in the spotlight — and because it resisted pressure to shift its focus to combating climate change.
“Most organizations in Washington now are trying to figure out how they make a national security case or an energy security case or countering–China case for their issues,” Ash said. “We have the luxury of having been here since Day One.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How would you describe SAFE in Washington parlance? Is it a trade association, a coalition, a think tank or something else altogether?
I’d probably characterize it as a bit of a unicorn in Washington, maybe a chimera. We’re not a trade association, so we’re not beholden to the lowest common denominator, member-driven policy positions that come with the trade association space.
We also don’t really fit in that category of a think tank — they sit in marble board rooms and they think deeply about policy, and they write documents that a certain set of people in Washington read. That’s not really our bailiwick either.
We want to get to the next step of, what do you do with it? How do you take these concepts of sound policy that will advance our national energy security goals, and match them with convenings and education and advocacy that are necessary to actually move the ball forward?
How is SAFE positioning itself in response to the Trump era?
I don’t think it’s taken a lot of adaptation. SAFE’s mission when we started is the same mission it is today, which is ending the dependencies that go along with energy. Particularly in 2025 Washington, the messages that we have leaned on for 20 years — around national security, military readiness, supply chain security — are increasingly front of mind, both on Capitol Hill and with this White House.
A lot of those groups that have branded themselves as climate groups are really struggling now. Most organizations in Washington are trying to figure out, how do they make a national-security case or an energy-security case or countering-China case for their issues. We have the luxury of having been here since day one.
At the same time, SAFE was involved in defending certain IRA tax credits during Republicans’ reconciliation bill negotiations earlier this year. Will you maintain a focus on pushing what may be seen as green technologies?
For us, it always comes back to the overlap of our commercial and our defense needs. Our recent Pillars of Power report is all about how an advanced and resilient defense sector must be built on top of a thriving commercial base.
The innovations that power sensors, drones, command posts and autonomous systems are driven by innovations like driverless cars. Or battery technologies originally developed for electric vehicles can be deployed for drones and advanced weapons systems. It’s about civil-military fusion, but in an authentically American way.
Often, it seems like supply chain security and other goals, like combating climate change and reducing consumer prices, can be in tension. How do you balance that?
There’s a nuance when we talk about balancing the need to decouple and to strengthen domestic production, with the simultaneous need to continue to pick up the pace on the deployment of advanced new technologies.
Let’s say on drones. There is one camp who says we should just ban Chinese drones altogether, and another group who says, we have to be the global leaders in deploying and developing drones because they’re going to help increase efficiencies across a host of different industries.
We believe that both of those elements are true, and it requires a policy that is both going to allow you to de-risk and decouple your supply chain, while not ceding your ability to deploy these technologies quickly and at scale. That same thing applies, really, across most of the topics that we engage on.
