If you were at Pingry at the same time as Andrew Wong, you had to see this coming. You may not have known him, but you knew his name. You heard it at award ceremonies and oratory competitions, read it in the byline of Pingry Record editorials. Now, it won’t be long before you hear it on the news. Just three years after graduating from Pingry, the outspoken kid with a big brain and bigger ideas is helping to craft policy with international implications.
For almost two years, Andrew has worked at the Defensive Innovation Unit, a ten-year-old organization within the United States Department of Defense that aims to accelerate the U.S. Military’s adoption of commercial technology. This summer, he graduated from intern to Special Assistant to the Deputy Director, where he helps build policy on autonomous weapons and workshops strategies geared toward efficient military spending.
So how does an 18-year-old go from Pingry Politics Club to the Pentagon in less than one presidential term? For Andrew, it started with an embarrassment.
“I was in student government freshman year, and I got voted out in a very public way,” he remembers.
Refusing to be deterred, he decided to leave Georgetown politics behind and pursue American politics instead.
“I don’t see many things as setbacks,” he says. And he means it.
A few months after getting voted off student government, he was working on Capitol Hill under New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr. (Pingry ’86), where he helped write House Resolution 488 urging the transfer of a high-tech missile to Ukraine.
That summer, Andrew interned at the Bureau of Industry and Security in the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he worked on the first major piece of export control legislation the U.S. has passed in decades. Specifically, he operated in the sphere of aerospace and computer governance, analyzing technologies the U.S. wants to keep away from adversaries.
As a kid who grew up building computers, Andrew always had a tech edge. Working at the intersection of politics and tech at the DOC, he learned how valuable that edge could be. Andrew became familiar with Nvidia chips while building computers in Middle School. By the early 2020s, Nvidia had become the world leader in AI computing, and their chips are one of the keys to the future of commercial technology in national defense.
“Moving into BIS in 2023, I started to realize, ‘Oh my god, it’s all coming together,’” he says. “These chips I played with as a kid—it was video game computer stuff to me. This is national security.”
When he wasn’t teaching himself the national defense stratagem of the future, Andrew spent his time at Pingry learning how to function independently.
“Pingry taught me self-reliance, how to tell your story,” he says—if you’re a junior at Pingry, this is your sign to listen during the transcendentalist unit this year. “America’s a very individualist world. You got to take care of yourself—no one’s gonna take care of you. The most important skill I think you can have is how to advocate for yourself.”
He’s a 21-year-old kid working in the Defense Department who has spent hundreds of hours studying tech and learning diplomacy. And his most precious lesson is advocacy. Write that down.
Logically, Andrew is way too young to have a say in national security. It feels wrong to call him anything other than a “kid.” But he understands the stakes.
“If you f**k up in policy, people die.”
Blunt. Honest. Mature. That’s how Andrew operates. It’s how he’s always operated. He doesn’t care if you don’t like him, and there’s a Machiavelli quote in his yearbook to prove it. Approval means nothing to someone so passionate.
“It’s just mission,” he says. “Just find a mission that you can really dedicate yourself to. Find something you are quite literally willing to die for.”
Andrew’s mission started in 2019. Hong Kong was in turmoil, and his family felt the effects. He’s been working tirelessly to make his voice part of America’s diplomatic efforts with China ever since, and he won’t be stopping any time soon.
“This is the most important mission,” he says. “This is a global competition that will define this century. Whoever wins it in technology and spirit, ideology, values will govern the 21st century and determine what the world looks like.”
Even as an observer, that level of responsibility doesn’t sound real. Stakes so high belong in blockbuster movies, episodes of “The Wire.” Certainly not in the hands of The Pingry Record’s fourth-most-recent editor. But Andrew’s voice never wavers with irony or youthful insecurity. It strides with the confidence of a politician twice his senior. He knows exactly where he’s been, exactly where he needs to go. Try to stop him.
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