Jason Bradley Curtis, 41, is an active-duty Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force.  He is a combat experienced fighter pilot with over 2,500 hours in fighter aircraft.  Jason most recently served as Commander of the 63rd Fighter Squadron flying the F-35A Lightning II aircraft where he was accountable to 45 officers, 9 enlisted, 11 civilian personnel, and $4.4B of US Government assets. 

Prior to command, Jason served as Thunderbird #5—the Lead Solo for the U.S. Air Force Aerial Demonstration Squadron—flying the F-16 Fighting Falcon.  In this role, Jason represented the pride, precision, and professionalism of 680,000 Active Duty, Guard, and Reserve Airmen to the American public.  Before the Thunderbirds, Lt Col Curtis was qualified as a nuclear readiness mission command pilot where he trained to selective contingency nuclear assurance operations abroad.  Lt Col Curtis served overseas in the Pacific and European theaters, earning three Air Medals from actions in combat during operations Enduring Freedom, Odyssey Dawn, and Unified Protector. 

At Stanford, Jason is a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute.  His research focuses on small-scale startups, venture capitalism, and emerging technologies for defense applications.

Jason is a distinguished military graduate from the United States Air Force Academy with a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and a distinguished graduate from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with an M.S. in Aeronautical Sciences.  At Georgetown University, Jason was Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy under Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine and became a 2017 White House Fellow National Finalist.  After Georgetown, Lt Col Curtis was a cohort member at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in Montgomery, Alabama earning a Master of Philosophy in Military Strategy.  Presently, he volunteers with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, and American Field Service nationwide. Jason is a public speaker and mentor for young adults in his hometown of Kalispell, Montana.

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. Paul’s main scholarship can be catalogued in four clusters: War and Conflict; International Order and Regional Order; Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Proliferation; and International Relations of South Asia/Asia-Pacific. 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.

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 is currently an assistant professor in the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at the Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. Originally from China, Xinru's research and teaching focus on nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security with a methodological focus on big data and formal methods. Her research is informed by extensive field research in Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and China. More broadly, Xinru is interested in public opinion and new methods of measuring it, foreign policy formation, alliance politics, and the historical relations of East Asia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Washington Quarterly, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy, and in edited volumes through Palgrave. She is also the leading author of the latest manuscript Asian Power Transitions (Columbia University Press). She is currently working on a book project that uses formal methods to explore the mechanisms through which nationalist protests influence international crisis bargaining.

Previously, 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). She obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California in August 2019.