Dr. Brandon Kirk Williams is currently on detail at the Department of Defense in the Office of Secretary of Defense, Force Development and Emerging Capabilities. Brandon is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Brandon’s research examines the intersection of emerging technologies, innovation, and national security policy. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2020.

Starting as a CGSR postdoctoral fellow, he focused on cybersecurity before developing into a research agenda on quantum and AI as a senior fellow. He organized three CGSR cybersecurity workshops in addition to assisting in workshops on AI, US-China strategic competition, and latent emerging technologies. His outside publications draw upon this research expertise to consider the effect of technology competition on shaping US national security policy. He also contributed to over-the-horizon reports for the National Nuclear Security Administration on emerging technology as well as the nuclear security enterprise’s workforce of the future.

Brandon was selected as a 2022-2023 Wilson Center China Initiative non-resident fellow that culminated in chapter titled "The Innovation Race: US-China Science and Technology Competition and the Quantum Revolution.” He designed and researched a chapter-length project analyzing Chinese initiatives to steer global innovation by seizing the commanding heights of science and technology. The chapter also investigated Chinese investments to incubate a thriving quantum technology ecosystem. Since, he has published on quantum competition that may disrupt security, economics, and everyday life.

As a Ph.D. student, Brandon was a Fulbright-Hays grantee in Indonesia, and conducted multi-sited dissertation fieldwork in Indonesia, India, Switzerland, and throughout the United States. Brandon uses his doctoral training in history to make sense of technology competition and to contribute to discussions on the future of U.S. national security.

T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the President of International Studies Association (ISA) for 2016-17. Paul is the author or editor of 21 books and over 75 scholarly articles/book chapters in the fields of International Relations, International Security, and South Asia. He is the author of the books: Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (Yale University Press, 2018); The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (Oxford University Press, 2013); Globalization and the National Security State (with N. Ripsman, Oxford University Press, 2010); The Tradition of Non-use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford University Press, 2009); India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (with B.R. Nayar Cambridge University Press, 2002); Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); and Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Paul currently serves as the editor of the Georgetown University Press book series: South Asia in World Affairs. 

For more, see: www.tvpaul.com

Jacqueline L. Hazelton is the executive editor of the journal International Security. She was previously an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School. Hazelton's research ranges from grand strategy, great power military intervention, and U.S. foreign and military policy to counterinsurgency, terrorism, and the uses of military power. She recently published Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare and is working on a manuscript about great powers, liberal values, and military intervention.

Prior to her faculty appointment at the Naval War College, Hazelton was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program. Earlier experience included a stint as an international journalist with the Associated Press where she analyzed and reported on world events from Tokyo to Kabul and covered U.S. news as well. She received M.A.’s in English Literature and in International Relations from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from Brandeis University's Department of Politics.

Xinru Ma’s research focuses on nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security with a methodological focus on formal and computational methods. More broadly, Xinru’s research encompasses three main objectives: Substantively, she aims to better theorize and enhance cross-country perspectives on critical phenomena such as nationalism and its impact on international security; Methodologically, she strives to improve measurement and causal inference based on careful methodologies, including formal modeling and computational methods like natural language processing; Empirically, she challenges prevailing assumptions that inflate the perceived risk of militarized conflicts in East Asia, by providing original data and analysis rooted in local knowledge and regional perceptions. Her work has been published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, The Washington Quarterly, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy, and in edited volumes through Palgrave. Her book - Asian Power Transitions: Internal Challenges, Common Conjecture, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations - is forthcoming with the Columbia University Press. 

At SNAPL, Xinru will lead the research group in collaborative projects that focus on US-Asia relations. One of the projects will contrast the rhetoric and debates in US politics surrounding the historical phenomenon of "Japan bashing" and the current perception of a "China threat.” By applying automated text analysis and qualitative analysis to public opinion data and textual data from various sources such as congressional hearings and presidential speeches, this project uncovers the similarities, differences, and underlying factors driving the narratives and public discourse surrounding US-Asia relations. She will also provide mentorship to student research assistants and research associates. 

Before joining SNAPL, Xinru was an assistant professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, where she led the Political Science Research Lab, a lab committed to closing the gender gap in computational methods and political science research by offering big data methods training and professionalization workshops to students. Prior to that, Xinru was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University (2019-2020), and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University (2018-2019). In 2023, Xinru was selected as an International Strategy Forum fellow by Schmidt Futures, an initiative that recognizes the next generation of problem solvers with extraordinary potential in geopolitics, innovation, and public leadership.