Claude Berube wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Navy during Andrew Jackson's presidency. He was a 2004 Brookings Institution LEGIS Fellow and a 2010 Maritime Security Studies Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He has worked on political campaigns, as an analyst and team leader at the Office of Naval Intelligence, as a national security fellow in the U.S. Senate, and as a defense contractor for Naval Sea Systems Command and the Office of Naval Research.

He has taught as both a military officer and civilian at the United States Naval Academy where his courses included American Government, Terrorism, Campaigns & Elections, Intelligence & National Security. Maritime Security Challenges, Naval History, and Emergent Naval Warfare. An intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, he has served on active duty assignments in Europe and Guantanamo Bay and deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2004-2005 with Expeditionary Strike Group Five. He is a contributing editor at War on the Rocks. He is the host of the naval history podcast "Preble Hall".