Many people, several, a large number, I don't know exactly how many, belive the anonymous op-ed author is former Utah Governor and current US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman. You can Google it to find out the reasons why, all of which are very plausible and utterly make sense. But that doesn't mean he is the author.
Here is his statement of denial that he wrote the piece:
“Come to find, when you’re serving as the U.S. envoy in Moscow, you’re an easy target on all sides. Anything sent out by me would have carried my name. An early political lesson I learned: Never send an anonymous op-ed."
All of the other Trump administration officials who have offered up denias have done so in unambiguous ways, full-throated, crystal clear.
Huntsman's statement is a full-on, straight-up, in-your-face, non-denial denial. The only thing he denied is sending out something that didn't carry his name, which is not the same as having something published that didn't carry his name.
If he wrote it and submitted it to the NYT, it almost certainly carried his name, and if so almost certainly also carried with it the condition that if it gets published that it be published anonymously, without his name.
Something to think about, anyway.
I don't know if he wrote it. He might have. I do know that there is nothing new in the piece. Not one thing. It contains every hobby horse du jour that the Press has hammered ad nauseum for the last two years. It's almost like it was written by a member of the Press as a way to say, "See? We told you so! We're completely vindicated!"
The fact that it was written in the style of print journalism, using primarily one-sentence paragraphs, is also a little suspect. But that could be dismissed to having been edited by a copy editor who chose that layout
The timing that allowed the NYT op-ed to steal the thunder from WaPo's Bob Woodward is also a possible factor, though not necessarily in who penned it.
In any case, in government or any large company it's not that hard to find one disgruntled employee who thinks they know more and are smarter than the boss.