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Artificial intelligence is already reshaping how businesses operate, how governments manage risk, and how decisions get made at scale. Dan Kunze ’12 is working at the center of that shift.

A graduate of Widener University Delaware Law School, Kunze now serves as vice president for the Department of Defense at Exiger, where he leads efforts tied to supply chain visibility, industrial resilience and national security. At the same time, he’s bringing that real-world perspective back into the classroom, helping Widener students understand not just what AI is, but what actually determines who can deploy it at scale and who cannot.

For Kunze, the message is simple. This isn’t something future lawyers can afford to sit out.

That perspective comes from experience, not theory.

Long before AI became part of everyday conversation, Kunze was working in the systems that make it possible, helping companies rethink data, infrastructure and scale at a moment when cloud computing was just beginning to take hold. What looked like technical problem-solving at the time now reads as early exposure to the foundation AI depends on.
Today, that work has expanded into a much larger landscape.

At Exiger, Kunze leads teams supporting Department of Defense initiatives focused on strengthening supply chains and identifying risk across complex, global networks. The work relies on processing and interpreting large volumes of data, but the limiting factor isn’t innovation. It’s infrastructure. AI systems scale only where energy, computers, supply chains and skilled labor allow them to.

The work isn’t theoretical. It directly impacts how the United States understands risk, secures critical supply chains, and operates in increasingly contested environments.

Even in a role that sits squarely in the technology and national security space, his legal training still shows up every day.
Much of the work comes down to understanding problems clearly, identifying what matters, and navigating decisions that carry real consequences. The analytical discipline developed in law school continues to shape how he approaches that work, especially in environments where ambiguity and scale intersect.

That same mindset carries into the classroom.

In August 2025, Kunze began teaching a foundational AI course offered across both Widener University Commonwealth Law School and Widener University Delaware Law School. The course gives students a clearer picture of what’s actually driving the technology they hear so much about. Rather than focusing on surface-level tools, it focuses on the systems behind them, including data infrastructure, energy demand, computer constraints, regulatory frameworks, and the broader production environment that AI depends on.

It’s a shift in perspective that often catches students off guard.

Many come in thinking of AI in terms of familiar tools or platforms. By the end of the course, they’re looking at it as a system, one that creates both constraints and opportunities and one that will shape where legal, business and policy work happens in the years ahead.

That kind of exposure matters, especially for students still figuring out their path.

Kunze recognizes that feeling. His own path into law wasn’t linear. It consistently moved toward systems under pressure.
A first-generation college and law student, he started at community college before transferring to Temple University. After graduation, he had both a military commission opportunity and a law school acceptance in front of him. He chose law school, enrolling at Delaware Law in 2008 while working full-time during the day.

Midway through, he made another decision that would shape his trajectory. He joined the military during his 2L summer, completed basic training, and later commissioned as an Army officer. That experience –stepping into a system defined by constraint, structure and accountability – would influence how he approached everything that followed.
His first job after law school came through a chance conversation that turned into an opportunity with Gartner, placing him in Northern Virginia at a time when many graduates were still searching for work.

From there, his career continued to build in environments where law, technology, and strategy intersect, often in moments where systems were scaling, shifting or under pressure.

That background shapes how he talks to students now, not as someone who followed a clear plan, but as someone who learned to recognize where systems were moving and step into them early.

It also shapes how he talks about AI.

Kunze doesn’t frame it as a niche area or a passing trend. He sees it as a foundational shift in how systems operate. The conversation around AI is often focused on applications and interfaces, but the real constraints, and therefore the real opportunities, sit deeper in the stack.

For students willing to understand those systems, he sees significant opportunity.

At the same time, he’s careful not to reduce the conversation to disruption alone.

There are real challenges ahead, but also real opportunities. He points to areas like access to legal services, where technology could expand support to communities that have long been underserved. He also sees the emergence of new roles – positions that don’t fit traditional definitions but sit at the intersection of law, infrastructure and decision-making.

Kunze doesn’t see it as something driven by one voice or one program. He sees it as a collective effort, one that reflects the experiences and perspectives of students, faculty and alumni already working in these environments.
That idea, that there isn’t one defined path, is something he understands well.

His own career didn’t follow a straight line. What mattered more was paying attention, adapting, and stepping into opportunities as they emerged, especially when those opportunities sat inside systems that were changing.

Right now, AI is one of those moments.

But for Kunze, the real question isn’t whether AI will matter.

It’s who will understand the systems behind it well enough to operate when it does.