35 Leading Thought Leaders on Defence Globally

Introduction

The most important conversations in global defence and national security are not happening in classified briefing rooms alone. They are unfolding on LinkedIn, in peer-reviewed journals, on podcasts recorded from kitchen tables, and in the pages of books that sit on the desks of defence ministers and four-star generals. The people shaping how governments think about war, deterrence, alliance politics, and the future of armed conflict are often not the names that make the front pages. They are researchers, analysts, strategist-practitioners, and educators who spend their careers building the intellectual architecture that policy eventually relies on.

The global security environment in 2026 has rarely been more consequential or more contested. Russia's war in Ukraine has entered its fifth year and transformed how militaries think about drone warfare, munitions production, and industrial mobilisation. China's military modernisation continues at pace, and the question of Taiwan remains the central strategic challenge of the Indo-Pacific. The United States has released a National Defense Strategy that marks a significant pivot toward homeland defence and China deterrence, while European allies are accelerating their own rearmament after decades of underinvestment. The global order that held for eight decades is under visible strain, and the intellectual work of understanding what comes next has never mattered more.

This list profiles 35 of the most credible, active, and genuinely valuable thought leaders in defence and national security globally for 2026. They span the full range of the discipline, from grand strategy and nuclear deterrence to drone warfare, European security, and the security dimensions of the Indo-Pacific. What they share is a commitment to rigorous public thinking, an active presence in the debate, and a track record of producing ideas that change how the field sees itself.

A note on scope: this list deliberately moves past the household names that dominate any Google search for "defence experts." The field has well-known voices the reader has almost certainly already encountered. This list surfaces the researchers, analysts, and scholar-practitioners whose work shapes the field below the headlines, many of whom are posting original analysis on LinkedIn, publishing reports that governments actually use, and teaching the next generation of strategic thinkers.

If your organisation is navigating leadership, team dynamics, or culture change in a high-stakes environment, the work these thinkers describe is ultimately about human beings operating under pressure. Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold globally) and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with leadership teams across sectors, including defence-adjacent organisations, helping them build the team dynamics and communication practices that high-stakes environments demand. To discuss how Jonno might support your team, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Thought Leadership in Defence and National Security Matters

Defence and national security are fields where bad ideas can cost lives and good ideas can prevent wars. The quality of strategic thinking that circulates through governments, militaries, and allied institutions determines whether deterrence holds, whether alliances remain credible, and whether the tools of war are deployed wisely or recklessly. It matters enormously who the most influential thinkers are, what frameworks they are promoting, and whose voices are shaping the next generation of practitioners.

There is also a practical dimension. Organisations operating in defence-adjacent industries, policy environments, and executive education need to understand the intellectual landscape of global security. The thought leaders on this list are not just commentators. They are the people who get called to testify before parliaments and congressional committees, who brief senior military officers, who write the reports that become the basis for national defence strategies, and who train the analysts and advisers who carry these ideas into government.

Following the right voices means understanding the strategic environment earlier, more accurately, and with greater nuance than those who rely on news headlines alone. The best national security thought leaders are the ones who see around corners.

For leaders managing teams under pressure, navigating rapid change, and making high-stakes decisions in complex environments, the principles that defence thinkers apply, clarity of strategic purpose, honest assessment of risk, disciplined decision-making, and ruthless prioritisation, translate directly into organisational leadership. Jonno White, host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast with over 230 episodes reaching listeners in more than 150 countries, works with leadership teams on exactly these challenges. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

This list was built through a systematic review of the active landscape of defence and national security thought leadership in 2026, drawing on analysis from major think tanks across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Asia, and the broader international security community. Candidates were assessed on the quality and credibility of their published work, their engagement with the current strategic debate, the diversity of geographic and disciplinary perspectives they bring, and their demonstrated commitment to public intellectual contribution rather than institutional commentary alone.

The list deliberately prioritises voices who are actively contributing original thinking to the debate rather than simply responding to it. It spans researchers at leading academic institutions, senior fellows at the most respected defence-focused think tanks, scholar-practitioners who have combined government or military service with rigorous intellectual output, and analysts who are shaping how allied governments think about the most consequential security challenges of the moment.

Readers should note that the field of defence thought leadership is genuinely dominated by voices from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. This list reflects that reality while actively seeking geographic diversity, including researchers from Australia, Singapore, India, France, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, and the broader international community. Readers seeking perspectives specific to Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East beyond what this list provides should explore regional publications and research institutes in those communities directly.

Category 1: Grand Strategy and Defence Policy

The voices in this category operate at the highest level of strategic abstraction. They are asking the foundational questions: what are states trying to achieve with their military instruments, how should they balance deterrence and diplomacy, and what does a credible defence strategy actually require? Their work shapes how governments frame their national defence strategies, how alliances define their collective commitments, and how the profession of arms understands its purpose.

1. Mick Ryan | Lowy Institute / CSIS

Retired Major General Mick Ryan served as Commander of the Australian Defence College before leaving the Australian Army in 2022, and his transition to public intellectual has been one of the most productive in the defence world. Now Senior Fellow for Military Studies at the Lowy Institute and Adjunct Fellow at CSIS in Washington, Ryan combines 35 years of practical military experience with genuine scholarly rigour, producing analysis that bridges operational reality and strategic theory.

His book The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation under Fire, published in August 2024 by the US Naval Institute Press, represents the most comprehensive account yet of how a modern military learns and adapts under the pressure of sustained high-intensity warfare. Ryan posts multiple times weekly on LinkedIn, writes a regular column for the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC Australia, and has become the clearest Australian voice on the strategic lessons of contemporary conflict. His April 2026 commentary on Australia's new National Defence Strategy is essential reading for anyone seeking an honest assessment of whether the document matches the strategic moment.

2. Kori Schake | American Enterprise Institute

Few voices in the American defence establishment combine scholarly depth, policy experience, and media fluency as effectively as Kori Schake. Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, she previously served as Deputy Director-General of the IISS in London and held senior positions at the State Department, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council. Her 2025 book The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States has been described by reviewers as the definitive text on its subject.

Schake posts regularly on LinkedIn and appears across major media outlets, including the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and major American publications. Her analysis of the 2026 National Defense Strategy and of the Trump administration's approach to the transatlantic alliance has been among the most cited in the field. She brings a rare combination of historical perspective and immediate policy relevance to every piece she publishes.

3. Stacie Pettyjohn | Center for a New American Security

Stacie Pettyjohn is Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, and she is arguably the most rigorous voice in Washington on defence strategy, force planning, and wargaming. Her research on drone warfare, munitions stockpiles, and the operational implications of emerging technologies has become foundational reading for anyone thinking seriously about how wars are actually fought and won in the 2020s.

Her September 2025 report on the United States' unpreparedness to defend against drone threats drew significant attention across the defence community, and her CNAS panel work on the future of airborne battle management is essential for understanding multi-domain operations. Pettyjohn also teaches wargaming as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS and has served on the Reserve Forces Policy Board. She is one of the most LinkedIn-active researchers in her field, posting original analysis with genuine regularity.

4. Rory Medcalf | Australian National University

Rory Medcalf is one of the world's leading experts on Indo-Pacific security and the Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, a position he has held since 2015. His book Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won't Map the Future remains one of the most influential strategic documents shaping how Australia and its allies think about the region. Medcalf posts regularly on LinkedIn and gave a National Press Club address in April 2026, a sign of his central role in shaping Australian strategic debate.

His influence on Australian defence thinking is direct and documented: the language of Indo-Pacific strategy that now dominates Australian foreign and defence policy owes a significant intellectual debt to Medcalf's scholarship and advocacy. He is also a central figure in the Quad academic community, bringing scholarly rigour to a policy debate that is often dominated by government officials.

5. François Heisbourg | IISS and Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique

François Heisbourg is one of Europe's most consequential strategic thinkers, a Senior Adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Special Adviser to the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in Paris. He has spent five decades shaping European strategic culture, contributing to nuclear policy debates, NATO strategy discussions, and the intellectual framing of European defence autonomy. His 2023 work Les Leçons d'une guerre, which analysed the first year of the Ukraine war, has generated significant debate across European capitals.

Heisbourg is particularly valuable as a French voice at a moment when France's strategic culture, which has always differed from the Anglo-American mainstream, has gained new relevance as European states reconsider their dependence on the United States. His work bridges the transatlantic gap and provides perspective that Washington-centred analysis routinely misses.

6. Claudia Major | German Council on Foreign Relations

Claudia Major is a Senior Associate and head of the security policy research division at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and she is one of the most important European voices on NATO, European defence, and the consequences of Germany's long-delayed strategic awakening. Her research on European strategic autonomy, on the implications of Germany's Zeitenwende, and on the NATO alliance's adaptation to the post-2022 security environment has been cited extensively in European policy circles.

Major posts regularly on LinkedIn in both German and English, reaching audiences on both sides of the transatlantic debate. Her perspective on how Europe is rebuilding its defence capacity and what that means for the alliance is uniquely informed by her position within Germany's own strategic transformation.

Category 2: Warfare Innovation and Emerging Technology

No dimension of the contemporary security debate is moving faster than the intersection of technology and warfare. The voices in this category are grappling with how drones, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and cyber capabilities are reshaping the character of conflict. Their work matters because policymakers, military planners, and industry leaders are all looking to the same small community of rigorous analysts to understand what the battlefield of tomorrow actually looks like.

7. Paul Scharre | Center for a New American Security

Paul Scharre is Executive Vice President at CNAS and the author of two books that have become standard texts in the field of technology and warfare. Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, published in 2018, was named one of The Economist's top five books to understand modern warfare and one of Bill Gates' top five books of that year. His follow-up, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, published in 2023, addresses how AI is reshaping the strategic competition between the United States and China. TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2023.

Scharre is a former US Army Ranger who served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before moving to the Pentagon and then to CNAS. This combination of operational experience and policy expertise gives his analysis a credibility that purely academic voices often lack. His March 2026 work on the intersection of commercial AI and military power, including the Pentagon's relationship with Anthropic, is essential reading for anyone following this space.

8. Franz-Stefan Gady | Gady Consulting / IISS

Franz-Stefan Gady is an Austrian-based analyst, founder of Gady Consulting, and an adjunct senior fellow at the IISS, and he is one of the most prolific and rigorous voices on the lessons of the war in Ukraine for military institutions. His co-authored work on multidomain operations and his extensive analytical writing on Ukraine have established him as a central figure in the European defence debate. He posts regularly on LinkedIn and writes for War on the Rocks, Foreign Policy, and major European outlets.

Gady's particular contribution is his willingness to challenge comfortable Western narratives about Ukraine's military performance with rigorous, evidence-based analysis. His work on how the war is reshaping thinking about attrition, industrial mobilisation, and force design is among the most cited in European military education circles.

9. Jacqueline Schneider | Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Jacqueline Schneider is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and one of the field's leading voices on the interaction between technology, deterrence, and strategic stability. Her research examines how emerging technologies, including AI, cyber capabilities, and autonomous systems, affect the risk of conflict escalation, and whether the mental models that governed nuclear deterrence are adequate for a world of multipolar AI competition.

Schneider's work bridges the gap between technical capability and strategic consequence in a way that few analysts manage. She has published extensively on cyber and nuclear deterrence, on the risks of automated decision-making in high-stakes military contexts, and on how militaries should think about the ethics of autonomous weapons. Her LinkedIn presence reflects her active engagement with the current debate.

10. Justin Bronk | Royal United Services Institute

Justin Bronk is a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI specialising in air power and technology, and he has become one of the most relied-upon public voices for understanding the air war in Ukraine, Russian and NATO air capabilities, and the broader implications of contested airspace for Western military planning. His commentary on Russian air operations, on the performance of Western weapons systems in Ukrainian hands, and on the emerging dynamics of drone warfare has been widely cited in media and policy circles.

Bronk posts regularly on LinkedIn and contributes to RUSI publications with a combination of technical depth and accessible analysis that is relatively rare in the defence research community. His work is essential for anyone seeking to understand what the Ukraine war has revealed about the actual performance of Western military technology.

11. Erik Lin-Greenberg | Center for a New American Security

Erik Lin-Greenberg is a Fellow at CNAS and the author of The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft, published by Cornell University Press in 2025. His research challenges the conventional wisdom that drones inherently increase the risk of conflict escalation, arguing instead that drone operations are actually less likely to escalate into broader conflict than operations involving crewed assets, because of the reduced human and political costs they impose on decision-makers.

This counterintuitive finding has generated significant debate in the strategic studies community and has direct implications for how policymakers think about the use of unmanned systems in both coercive diplomacy and armed conflict. Lin-Greenberg posts actively and his work has featured in War on the Rocks, Breaking Defense, and the CNAS podcast series on military AI.

12. Ulrike Franke | European Council on Foreign Relations

Ulrike Franke is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and one of the sharpest European voices on the intersection of technology, security, and geopolitics. Based between London and Berlin, she has published extensively on drone warfare, European defence industrial capacity, and the implications of autonomous systems for European security policy. Her work on how Europe is responding to the lessons of the Ukraine war, particularly in the domain of unmanned systems, is essential for understanding the continent's military transformation.

Franke posts regularly on LinkedIn and is a frequent commentator in major European and international media. Her perspective as a German analyst working through a British-based institution gives her a particular vantage point on the transatlantic dimensions of the technology and security debate.

Category 3: Indo-Pacific and China Security

The strategic competition between the United States and China, and the question of Taiwan's status, represent the defining strategic challenge of the coming decade. The voices in this category are the researchers and analysts who have spent their careers building the most rigorous understanding available of China's military modernisation, of how Indo-Pacific states are responding to growing Chinese power, and of what deterrence actually requires in this specific strategic environment.

13. Oriana Skylar Mastro | Stanford University

Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University and a nonresident senior fellow at AEI, and she is one of the most rigorous researchers working on China's military strategy, its approach to Taiwan, and the conditions under which Chinese leaders would decide to use force. Her work combines deep knowledge of Chinese-language sources with genuine strategic insight, and she has testified before Congress on multiple occasions on China's military intentions and capabilities.

Mastro's analysis is particularly valuable because she takes Chinese strategic thinking seriously on its own terms rather than simply assessing it through a Washington lens. Her work on Chinese escalation management and on how the People's Liberation Army thinks about joint operations has influenced how the US military and its Indo-Pacific allies approach deterrence planning.

14. Bonnie Lin | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Bonnie Lin is a Senior Fellow and Director of the China Power Project at CSIS, and she is one of Washington's most authoritative voices on Chinese military power, Taiwan strait dynamics, and the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific. Her work combines rigorous primary source analysis with sustained policy engagement, and her contributions to CSIS's ongoing research on China's military are foundational for the field.

Lin posts actively on LinkedIn and her commentary on China's military exercises, its naval build-up, and its behaviour in the South China Sea has been widely cited in both policy and journalistic contexts. Her perspective is particularly important at a moment when the US-China military balance in the Indo-Pacific is shifting in ways that challenge long-standing assumptions about deterrence.

15. Ashley Townshend | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Ashley Townshend is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Asia Program, having previously led the foreign policy and defence research program at the United States Studies Centre in Sydney. He is one of the leading researchers on the AUKUS partnership, on Australian defence strategy, and on the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific from an Australian perspective.

Townshend's work on AUKUS has been particularly influential in shaping how both Australian and American policymakers think about the practical implementation of the submarine partnership and about the broader implications of the agreement for Indo-Pacific security architecture. He posts regularly on LinkedIn and his analysis of the 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy is essential reading.

16. Collin Koh | S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies

Collin Koh is a Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and he is one of the leading voices in Southeast Asia on naval affairs, maritime security, and the South China Sea dispute. His research provides a perspective on Indo-Pacific security that is grounded in the regional rather than the great power view, offering important correctives to Washington-centric analysis of the region's security dynamics.

Koh posts regularly on LinkedIn and contributes analysis to major regional and international publications. His commentary on Chinese naval operations, on ASEAN's responses to great power competition, and on the evolving maritime balance in the South China Sea is essential for understanding how Southeast Asian states are navigating the strategic pressures of 2026.

17. Harsh Pant | Observer Research Foundation

Harsh Pant is Vice President for Studies and Foreign Policy at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, and he is one of India's most prominent voices on strategic affairs, with particular expertise on India's foreign and security policy, the Indo-Pacific security architecture, and India's evolving relationship with major powers including the United States, China, and Russia. His work reflects a perspective that is genuinely non-Western without being anti-Western.

Pant posts actively on LinkedIn and contributes to major international publications. His analysis of how India is navigating its strategic relationships in the current environment, maintaining its own strategic autonomy while deepening security cooperation with the United States, Japan, and Australia, offers insights that Western-focused analysis routinely misses.

18. Duyeon Kim | Center for a New American Security

Duyeon Kim is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at CNAS and one of the most credible voices in the field on Korean Peninsula security, North Korean nuclear weapons, and extended deterrence in Northeast Asia. Her work combines deep knowledge of South Korean and North Korean policy with sustained engagement with the US-South Korea alliance, and she has contributed to Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues with North Korea, China, and Russia on Korean Peninsula denuclearisation.

Kim's perspective as a Korean-American analyst who understands the security concerns of US allies in Northeast Asia is particularly valuable at a moment when the credibility of US extended deterrence commitments is under scrutiny. She posts regularly on LinkedIn and her commentary on alliance management and nuclear signalling in the region is among the most cited in the field.

Category 4: European Security and NATO

The security of Europe has rarely been more contested or more urgent. The voices in this category are grappling with what European defence actually means after the shock of Russian aggression, how NATO is adapting to a fundamentally different strategic environment, and what genuine European strategic autonomy would require. Their work is shaping the most consequential defence policy decisions in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

19. Elisabeth Braw | Atlantic Council

Elisabeth Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Transatlantic Security Initiative and one of Europe's most prominent voices on grey zone warfare, hybrid threats, and the resilience of democratic societies to coercive state action below the threshold of armed conflict. Her award-winning book Goodbye Globalization: The Return of a Divided World, published in 2024, has become essential reading for anyone thinking about how economic interdependence is being weaponised by authoritarian states.

Braw is Swedish by origin and writes from a distinctly European perspective, which gives her analysis of Russian grey zone operations a grounding in the lived experience of Nordic and Baltic states that Washington-based analysts often lack. She posts regularly on LinkedIn and is one of the most widely followed European security voices on the platform, with recent commentary cited in The Economist in May 2026.

20. Jana Puglierin | European Council on Foreign Relations

Jana Puglierin is the Head of the Berlin Office and a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and she is one of the sharpest voices in Germany on European strategic autonomy, transatlantic relations, and the implications of American policy shifts for European security. Her research on how European states are responding to the Trump administration's approach to NATO, and on what a genuinely European approach to defence would require, addresses questions that are shaping policy debates across the continent.

Puglierin posts regularly on LinkedIn and contributes to major German and European publications. Her analysis of the transatlantic relationship is particularly valuable because it combines genuine intellectual rigour with direct policy engagement and a realistic assessment of what Europe can and cannot do for its own defence.

21. Nick Reynolds | Royal United Services Institute

Nick Reynolds is a Research Fellow at RUSI specialising in land warfare and emerging military concepts, and he has become one of the clearest voices in the UK defence research community on the implications of the Ukraine war for how land forces think about combined arms operations, logistics, and force design. His work on the realities of high-intensity land warfare, drawing on the operational lessons of the conflict, has been widely cited in military education and doctrine development.

Reynolds posts actively on LinkedIn and contributes to RUSI's ongoing analysis of the Ukraine conflict. His perspective is particularly valuable for military professionals and policymakers seeking to understand what the war has actually revealed about the character of contemporary land warfare.

22. Tobias Bunde | Munich Security Conference

Tobias Bunde is Director of Policy and Research at the Munich Security Conference and one of the leading voices on transatlantic security, European defence, and the geopolitics of the post-liberal order. The Munich Security Conference's annual Munich Security Report, which Bunde co-authors, has become one of the most widely read documents in the European security community, tracking the state of global insecurity and the policy responses it demands.

Bunde posts regularly on LinkedIn and his analysis of the state of the transatlantic alliance, of European strategic culture, and of the evolving global order reflects a unique vantage point at the intersection of the policy and research communities. His engagement with the ideas that drive the Munich Security Conference debates gives his commentary a breadth that single-institution researchers often cannot match.

23. Alice Billon-Galland | Chatham House

Alice Billon-Galland is a Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House's Europe Programme, where she focuses on European security, transatlantic relations, and British and French defence policy in the post-Brexit era. Her research on European defence integration, on the implications of French and British strategic culture for NATO cohesion, and on the bilateral Franco-British defence relationship offers a perspective that is grounded in the specific political and institutional realities of European security architecture.

Billon-Galland posts regularly on LinkedIn and contributes to Chatham House's extensive publications on European security. Her analysis of how European states are navigating the combined pressures of American strategic reorientation, Russian aggression, and the internal politics of EU defence cooperation is among the most nuanced available in the public domain.

Category 5: Nuclear Deterrence, WMD, and Arms Control

The nuclear dimension of international security has rarely felt more salient. The voices in this category are grappling with how deterrence functions in a multipolar world, how arms control regimes are under strain, and what stability actually requires when multiple states are modernising their nuclear forces simultaneously. Their work matters because the consequences of getting nuclear deterrence wrong are civilisational.

24. Ankit Panda | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of the field's most prolific and accessible voices on nuclear deterrence, arms control, and North Korean nuclear weapons. His 2025 book The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon, published by Polity Press, addresses the structural challenges of nuclear deterrence in a world where multiple actors are modernising their forces simultaneously. His earlier book Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea, published in 2020, remains a definitive account of North Korea's nuclear strategy.

Panda posts actively on LinkedIn and contributes analysis to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and major international publications. His combination of primary source depth on North Korea and his broader expertise on nuclear deterrence theory gives his work a range that few analysts in the field can match.

25. Sophia Besch | Carnegie Europe

Sophia Besch is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe in Berlin, specialising in European defence, the EU's role in security and defence policy, and the geopolitics of the European neighbourhood. Her research on European defence spending, on the EU's defence industrial ambitions, and on the gap between European declaratory policy and actual military capability addresses some of the most consequential questions in the European security debate.

Besch posts regularly on LinkedIn and contributes to Carnegie Europe's publications and to major European media. Her perspective as a German-British analyst working within the Carnegie network gives her work a transatlantic dimension that is particularly valuable at a moment when European states are reassessing the foundations of their security.

26. Lora Saalman | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Lora Saalman is a Senior Researcher at SIPRI and one of the leading voices on Chinese nuclear policy, Sino-US strategic stability, and the emerging dynamics of a multipolar nuclear world. Her research draws on deep expertise in Chinese strategic thinking and on extensive engagement with Chinese policy communities, giving her work a grounding in Chinese perspectives that Washington-based analysts often cannot access.

Saalman's contribution to the field is particularly important because the dynamics of Chinese nuclear modernisation, including the rapid expansion of China's missile forces and the implications for strategic stability, are among the least well-understood dimensions of the current security environment. Her SIPRI work provides some of the most credible public analysis available on these questions.

27. Tytti Erästö | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Tytti Erästö is a Senior Researcher at SIPRI with expertise in nuclear disarmament, arms control, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime. Her work addresses the systemic challenges to the nuclear non-proliferation architecture from a perspective that takes seriously both the security arguments for deterrence and the humanitarian and legal arguments for disarmament. This dual literacy is relatively rare in the field and makes her analysis particularly useful for policymakers navigating the political tensions between deterrence commitments and disarmament obligations.

Erästö brings a Finnish perspective to these debates, which is important given Finland's recent accession to NATO and the particular salience of nuclear deterrence questions for Nordic and Baltic states living in the shadow of Russian nuclear signalling.

Category 6: Intelligence, Counterterrorism, and Irregular Warfare

Irregular warfare, terrorism, and the activities of intelligence agencies remain central to the security challenges of the 2020s even as the headlines focus on conventional conflict. The voices in this category are grappling with how states use intelligence and covert action, how terrorist and insurgent movements adapt to military pressure, and how the character of irregular conflict is changing under the influence of new technologies and shifting geopolitical conditions.

28. Matthew Savill | Royal United Services Institute

Matthew Savill is Director of Military Sciences at RUSI and one of the UK's leading researchers on the intersection of military technology, doctrine, and strategy. His work addresses how militaries should think about the integration of emerging capabilities into existing force structures, and his commentary on the lessons of the Ukraine war for British and NATO defence planning has been widely cited in UK defence circles.

Savill posts regularly on LinkedIn and contributes to RUSI's extensive publications programme. His analysis of how unmanned systems, AI, and electronic warfare are reshaping the character of military operations reflects a combination of technical literacy and strategic insight that is relatively rare in the field.

29. Becca Wasser | Center for a New American Security

Becca Wasser is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at CNAS who has become one of Washington's most visible commentators on the Middle East security environment, particularly in relation to the conflict involving Iran and the implications for US military posture in the region. Her CNN appearances in April and May 2026, analysing the US-Iran conflict and its implications for regional stability, reflect a combination of analytical depth and communication skill that makes her one of the most effective translators of complex security analysis for general audiences.

Wasser posts actively on LinkedIn and her work on Middle East military dynamics, Iranian capabilities, and US strategic choices in the region is among the most current and credible available in the public domain.

30. Sidharth Kaushal | Royal United Services Institute

Sidharth Kaushal is a Research Fellow at RUSI specialising in sea power, naval strategy, and maritime security, and he has emerged as one of the most rigorous voices in the UK on how navies need to adapt to the changed character of maritime warfare that the Ukraine conflict has revealed. His research on anti-ship missile capabilities, on submarine operations, and on the vulnerability of surface fleets to drone attacks addresses questions that are directly shaping procurement decisions in multiple navies.

Kaushal posts regularly on LinkedIn and his analysis of naval strategy, sea denial, and the implications of cheap precision munitions for how states think about maritime power is essential for anyone following the transformation of naval warfare.

31. Dina Esfandiary | Bloomberg Economics

Dina Esfandiary is the Middle East Geoeconomics Lead at Bloomberg Economics, based in Geneva, and one of the most credible public voices on Iranian foreign and security policy, Gulf security dynamics, and the nuclear negotiations. Her career spans senior research positions at the International Crisis Group, the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, CSIS, and the IISS, giving her analysis an institutional depth that is grounded in both policy and scholarship.

Esfandiary co-authored Triple-Axis: China, Russia, Iran and Power Politics with Ariane Tabatabai, published by I.B. Tauris in 2018, and her book New Order in the Gulf: The Rise of the UAE, published in 2023, represents the most comprehensive recent account of how the UAE has emerged as a major strategic actor. Her analysis of how Iran thinks about deterrence, how it uses proxies, and how it manages its relationships with Russia and China provides perspective that is genuinely difficult to find elsewhere in the public domain.

Category 7: Civil-Military Relations, Leadership, and the Human Dimension

War and security are ultimately human enterprises. The voices in this category examine the relationship between civilian societies and their militaries, the quality of strategic leadership, the social foundations of military effectiveness, and the political dimensions of security policy. Their work matters because the best weapons systems and force designs are only as good as the human institutions that employ them.

32. Mara Karlin | Johns Hopkins SAIS

Mara Karlin is a Professor of Practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and she previously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities in the Biden administration, where she led the development and implementation of the 2022 National Defense Strategy. Her book The Inheritance: America's Military After Two Decades of War, published in 2022 by Brookings Institution Press, provides one of the most rigorous and honest assessments of the cumulative costs and consequences of the post-9/11 wars for the US military as an institution.

Karlin's combination of academic scholarship and direct government experience gives her analysis of civil-military relations, of strategic decision-making, and of institutional adaptation a depth that purely academic voices often cannot achieve. Her work is essential for anyone seeking to understand how the US military is processing the lessons of two decades of irregular warfare. She was featured on MS NOW in March 2026, confirming her continued engagement with the current debate.

33. Chiara Ruffa | Sciences Po

Chiara Ruffa is a Professor in Political Science at the Centre for International Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, and she is one of the leading researchers on civil-military relations, peacekeeping operations, and the organisational sociology of military institutions. Her book Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2018, examines how the organisational culture of different military institutions shapes their behaviour in operations, with important implications for how alliances manage multinational operations.

Her second book, Composing Peace: Mission Composition in UN Peacekeeping, co-authored with Vincenzo Bove and Andrea Ruggeri and published by Oxford University Press in 2020, advances the field's understanding of how multinational mission composition affects peacekeeping outcomes. Ruffa brings a European and comparative perspective to questions about military institutions and civil-military relations that is a valuable complement to the US-centric literature that dominates much of the field. Her March 2026 article on rituals in the UN mission in Lebanon demonstrates her continued active scholarship.

34. Mustapha Sheikh | Royal United Services Institute

Mustapha Sheikh is a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI with expertise in Pakistan, South Asia, and the role of Muslim communities in British and Western security policy. His research addresses questions about counter-terrorism, about the political dynamics of security in South Asia, and about the intersection of identity, religion, and security that are central to understanding a wide range of contemporary conflicts and threats.

Sheikh brings a perspective to the RUSI research community that is both geographically and culturally distinctive, and his work on Pakistan's strategic calculations, on the implications of the South Asian security environment for global stability, and on British domestic security provides analysis that is not easily substituted by other sources.

35. Tanvi Madan | Brookings Institution

Tanvi Madan is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Programme at the Brookings Institution and Director of The India Project, and she is one of the world's leading researchers on Indian foreign policy, on the Quad, and on India's evolving role in the Indo-Pacific security architecture. Her book Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped US-India Relations During the Cold War provides essential historical context for understanding the contemporary US-India relationship.

Madan posts regularly on LinkedIn and her analysis of Indian strategic thinking, of how New Delhi is managing its relationships with Washington, Beijing, and Moscow simultaneously, and of what India's growing strategic weight means for the Indo-Pacific balance is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the security architecture of the region.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Any list of this kind involves difficult choices. A number of voices were seriously considered and deserve acknowledgement. Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London and one of the most distinguished strategic thinkers of the past 50 years, would appear on most such lists, and his Substack writing on the Ukraine war remains essential reading, though his primary output has shifted away from LinkedIn in recent years. Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations and H.R. McMaster at the Hoover Institution are voices whose work is widely read and whose credentials are beyond question, though both have very large social media followings that place them in a broadcast mode with less personal engagement than the voices chosen for this list.

Elbridge Colby, whose book The Strategy of Denial has been enormously influential on how Washington thinks about Indo-Pacific deterrence, was under consideration, but his appointment as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Trump administration in early 2025 means that his public intellectual output is currently constrained by government service. Kelly Grieco at the Stimson Center and Darya Dolzikova at RUSI were both strong candidates whose work on respectively US force posture and Russia's military also deserves attention beyond what space permitted here.

Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek would appear on most lists about thought leadership. Their work has shaped how organisations think about leadership, courage, and purpose for over a decade, and their contributions to those fields are foundational. This list deliberately moved past household names to surface voices the reader may not yet have encountered.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The most common mistake people make when engaging with defence and national security thought leadership is treating it as a monolithic body of opinion. The field contains genuine and serious disagreements. Realists, liberals, constructivists, and practitioners with direct military experience often reach radically different conclusions from the same strategic facts, and these disagreements are not simply resolvable by citing authority. Reading widely across the intellectual traditions represented on this list, rather than anchoring to a single voice, is essential for developing independent strategic judgement.

A second common mistake is confusing media visibility with analytical rigour. The voices who appear most frequently on television and in major newspapers are not always the ones producing the most careful analysis. Several of the thinkers on this list are not household names but their reports and articles are the ones that actually shape government thinking. Reading primary sources, particularly published reports, academic articles, and think tank publications, rather than relying on media commentary alone, will consistently produce better understanding.

A third mistake is failing to read across geographic perspectives. The strategic environment looks genuinely different from New Delhi, Singapore, Helsinki, and Canberra than it does from Washington or London. The analytical community in the United States is the largest and most well-resourced in the world, but its dominance of the English-language conversation sometimes crowds out perspectives that are essential for understanding how the rest of the world is actually experiencing the current security environment. The inclusion of voices from Australia, Singapore, India, Germany, France, Austria, and Sweden on this list is deliberate.

A fourth mistake is treating the current moment as unprecedented in ways that make historical experience irrelevant. Several of the thinkers on this list, including Kori Schake, Mara Karlin, and Lawrence Freedman, bring deep historical scholarship to contemporary problems. The history of civil-military relations, of deterrence theory, and of how states have managed great power competition in the past contains essential lessons for the present, and ignoring it in favour of purely current analysis is a common and costly error.

A fifth mistake, particularly for organisational leaders outside the defence sector, is assuming that none of this is relevant to their work. The principles that the best defence thinkers apply, clarity of strategic purpose, rigorous assessment of adversarial intent and capability, disciplined prioritisation under conditions of uncertainty, and honest evaluation of institutional failure, are exactly the principles that excellent organisational leadership requires. The translation is not perfect, but it is real.

Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, works with leadership teams on precisely these challenges in organisational contexts. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Implementation Guide: Building Your Defence Thought Leadership Reading List

The most valuable thing you can do immediately is choose three voices from this list whose geographic or disciplinary perspective you do not currently follow, and subscribe to whatever free content they produce. Most of the people on this list write Substack newsletters, LinkedIn articles, RUSI commentaries, CNAS reports, or Lowy Institute Interpreter pieces that are freely available and regularly published.

For LinkedIn specifically, the platform has become the primary channel through which many of these analysts distribute their work and engage with the wider policy and professional community. Following the people on this list on LinkedIn will surface their analysis in your feed and will expose you to the broader network of researchers and practitioners they engage with. The defence thought leadership community on LinkedIn is relatively small and genuinely collegial, and active engagement with the posts of these analysts, asking questions, sharing analysis with context, and engaging constructively with their arguments, will accelerate your understanding of the field considerably.

For deeper engagement, the institutional homes of these thinkers, CNAS, RUSI, CSIS, the Lowy Institute, SIPRI, Carnegie, the IISS, the Brookings Institution, ECFR, and DGAP, all publish regular reports, host webinars and podcasts, and produce shorter commentary that is designed to be accessible to policy-engaged audiences rather than only academic specialists. Subscribing to the publications and podcasts of two or three of these institutions will give you a structured diet of current defence analysis.

For those building a more serious engagement with the field, several of the people on this list run or contribute to excellent podcasts. War on the Rocks, to which Franz-Stefan Gady, Stacie Pettyjohn, and Becca Wasser regularly contribute, the CNAS podcast series, and the Lowy Institute's podcast are excellent starting points. The New Books in National Security podcast is valuable for engaging with the latest scholarly work in the field.

The goal should be pattern recognition over time. The most sophisticated consumers of defence thought leadership develop an ability to identify when a new event, a new piece of technology, or a new government decision matters strategically and when it does not. That pattern recognition comes from sustained engagement with rigorous analysis over months and years, not from reading any single report or following any single voice. Start somewhere, stay curious, and be willing to follow the analysis where it leads even when it challenges what you previously believed.

To discuss how the leadership principles that underpin high-performing organisations in high-stakes environments can be applied to your team, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Jonno White works with leadership teams in sectors including education, corporate, government, and defence-adjacent organisations around the world. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the best thought leaders on defence and national security globally?

The 35 people profiled in this guide represent a rigorous selection of the most active, credible, and intellectually valuable voices in the field for 2026. The selection spans grand strategy, warfare innovation, Indo-Pacific security, European security, nuclear deterrence, irregular warfare, and the human dimensions of military institutions. Rather than defaulting to the most famous names in the field, this list prioritises voices who are producing original, rigorous analysis and who are actively engaged in the current strategic debate.

What is the difference between defence policy and grand strategy?

Defence policy refers to the specific decisions governments make about military capabilities, force structure, procurement, and doctrine. Grand strategy operates at a higher level, asking how a state should use all the instruments of national power, including military, diplomatic, economic, and informational tools, to achieve its fundamental security and prosperity objectives. The best defence analysts work across both levels, connecting the specific choices about capability development to the broader strategic logic that should guide them.

Which defence experts should I follow on LinkedIn?

The majority of the 35 people on this list are active on LinkedIn and post regularly. Mick Ryan, Stacie Pettyjohn, Franz-Stefan Gady, Elisabeth Braw, Becca Wasser, Paul Scharre, Bonnie Lin, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Claudia Major, and Ulrike Franke are among the most active posters on the platform. Starting with three or four voices whose geographic or disciplinary focus matches your interests and following them consistently will build a useful feed of current analysis.

How is AI changing global defence and national security?

Artificial intelligence is reshaping military competition in three broad ways. First, it is transforming the battlefield through autonomous systems, drone swarms, and AI-assisted decision-making in targeting and logistics. Second, it is intensifying the intelligence competition between states by dramatically accelerating the processing of surveillance data and the identification of targets. Third, it is reshaping the broader strategic competition between the United States and China, as both states recognise that AI superiority in the military domain is likely to be a decisive factor in any future major conflict. Paul Scharre's Four Battlegrounds and Jacqueline Schneider's research on AI and nuclear deterrence are the best starting points for understanding these dynamics.

Can I hire someone to facilitate defence and leadership workshops for my team?

For leadership teams in defence-adjacent sectors seeking facilitated workshops on team dynamics, communication, strategic alignment, and decision-making under pressure, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold globally), works with organisations across sectors including government, education, corporate, and nonprofit. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss.

Who are the leading voices on great power competition?

Great power competition, particularly between the United States and China, is addressed most rigorously in this list by Oriana Skylar Mastro, Bonnie Lin, Ashley Townshend, Harsh Pant from the Indian perspective, and Kori Schake from the perspective of civil-military relations and American strategic culture. For the European dimension of the great power competition, Claudia Major, Jana Puglierin, and Elisabeth Braw are essential.

Which thought leaders focus on the human dimension of defence and security?

Mara Karlin, Chiara Ruffa, Mustapha Sheikh, and Mick Ryan all bring a sustained focus on the human, institutional, and political dimensions of military affairs, rather than treating defence solely as a question of technology and capability. Mara Karlin's work on civil-military relations and the institutional consequences of two decades of war, Chiara Ruffa's research on military organisational culture, and Mick Ryan's writing on education and adaptation in the profession of arms are the best starting points in this category.

Final Thoughts

The 35 people profiled in this guide share a commitment to rigorous, honest public thinking about some of the most consequential questions the world faces. They work across different institutions, different countries, different disciplinary traditions, and different political assumptions, but they are united by a belief that clear analysis matters, that the intellectual work of understanding the security environment is genuinely important, and that the public deserves access to the best available thinking about the forces shaping the world.

For leaders outside the defence sector, the value of engaging with this community is not that it will turn you into a defence analyst. It is that the habits of mind that distinguish the best strategic thinkers in this field, rigorous assessment of evidence, intellectual honesty about uncertainty, willingness to challenge conventional wisdom, and clarity about the difference between what is known and what is assumed, are precisely the habits that distinguish excellent organisational leaders in every sector.

The security environment of 2026 is not one that allows comfortable assumptions to go unchallenged. The same is true of the leadership environments in which most of us work. The best thing you can do is find the rigorous voices, read them consistently, and let their thinking challenge yours.

Jonno White works with leadership teams across sectors including education, corporate, government, and nonprofit organisations globally to build the team dynamics, communication practices, and strategic clarity that high-pressure environments demand. As the bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold, Jonno brings practical frameworks for the conversations that matter most, whether that is a difficult performance conversation, a team alignment session, or a strategic planning offsite. To discuss how Jonno might work with your team, email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect, and Jonno works with teams around the world whether face to face or virtually.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits across the UK, India, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Finland, Namibia, and more. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read: 35 Essential Thought Leaders on Team Culture (2026)

Discover 35 essential thought leaders on team culture in 2026, the practical voices shaping psychological safety, trust, and high-performing teams worldwide.

She works with senior leadership teams across Europe and posts regularly on LinkedIn about the small behavioural shifts that determine whether a team conversation becomes generative or defensive. Her perspective is particularly valuable for European and globally distributed teams where cultural norms around hierarchy, dissent, and feedback vary substantially from the American defaults that dominate most psychological safety writing.

Keep reading