China Desk

Joseph Cella returns to the China Desk podcast. Joseph is an American diplomat and political advisor, who served concurrently as the United States Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu from 2019 to 2021. A prominent Roman Catholic, Cella co-founded the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and Catholic Vote. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Leon Aron, who was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee in 1978, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He studies Russian domestic and foreign policy, US-Russia relations, and the economic, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet evolution.

From 2014 to 2020, Dr. Aron was a governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the operations of several international broadcasting outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. From 1990 to 2004, he was a panelist on Looking from America (Gliadya iz Ameriki), a weekly Voice of America Russian-language radio and television show. Dr. Aron has taught at Georgetown University and received the US Institute of Peace’s Peace Fellowship. In 2011-12 he was Co-chairman of the Russia Advisory Group of Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential election campaign.

Dr. Aron is also a prolific writer and editor. His latest book, Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War (AEI Press, 2023), chronicles, through the use of hundreds of Russian sources, how Vladimir Putin has used militarized patriotism to transform Russian society and maintain his grip on power. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

John Moolenaar is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Michigan's 2nd congressional district since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2003 to 2008 and the Michigan Senate from 2011 to 2014. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Dan Blumenthal is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has served in and advised the US government on China issues for more than a decade.

Before joining AEI, Mr. Blumenthal served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the US Department of Defense. He served as a commissioner on the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission from 2006 to 2012, and he was vice chairman of the commission in 2007. He also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional US-China Working Group. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Sulmaan Wasif Khan is assistant professor of international history and Chinese foreign relations at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Michael Sobolik joined AFPC as a Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies in September 2019. His work covers American and Chinese grand strategy, regional economic and security trends, America’s alliance architecture in Asia, and human rights. Michael also hosts Great Power Podcast, AFPC’s show about great power competition and U.S.-China relations. He is also the author of Countering China's Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance (Naval Institute Press, 2024). Michael's analysis has appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Politico, Newsweek, National Review, Jane's Defence Weekly, and RealClearDefense.

Prior to joining AFPC, Michael served as a Legislative Assistant in the United States Senate from 2014 to 2019. While in the Senate, Michael drafted legislation on China, Russia, India, Taiwan, North Korea, and Cambodia, as well as strategic systems and missile defense.

Michael is a graduate of Texas A&M University, where he studied political philosophy as an undergraduate. He also earned his Master of International Affairs degree in American grand strategy and U.S.-China relations at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Dmitri Alperovitch is an American think-tank founder, author, investor, philanthropist, podcast host and former computer security industry executive. He is the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think-tank in Washington, D.C., and a co-founder and former chief technology officer of CrowdStrike. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Joshua Eisenman’s research focuses on the political economy of China’s development and its foreign relations with the United States and the developing world—particularly Africa. His work has been published in top academic journals including World Development, Development and Change, Journal of Contemporary China and Cold War History, and in popular outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy. His views have been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist and The New Republic.

Eisenman’s newest book, Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune (Columbia University Press, 2018), received the honorable mention for the 2019 Robert W. Hamilton Book Award. In it he explains how more capital investment and better farming techniques increased agricultural productivity growth in Maoist China. In China Steps Out: Beijing’s Major Power Engagement with the Developing World (Routledge, 2018), he worked with Eric Heginbotham to analyze China’s policies toward the developing world. Eisenman’s second book, China and Africa: A Century of Engagement (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), co-authored with David Shinn, was named one of the top three books about Africa by Foreign Affairs. Eisenman and Shinn’s next volume, under advance contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press, will examine the China-Africa political and security relationship. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Nadia Schadlow is an American academic and defense-related government officer who briefly served in 2018 as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy in the Trump Administration. She is the primary author of the 2017 National Security Strategy.

She is currently a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and a co-chair of the Hamilton Commission on Securing America’s National Security Innovation Base.

She conducts research and analysis on a range of issues at the intersection of strategy, national security, and technology. She writes on topics that include the vulnerabilities of US supply chains in areas such as advanced batteries and energetic materials; the relationship between climate and defense policy; and the disconnects between strategy and operational policies. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW

Dr. George Calhoun, Ph.D., is Director at The Hanlon Financial Systems Center. He has spent 25 years in the high-tech segment of the wireless communications industry. He is a co-founder of InterDigital Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: IDCC), where he was involved for twelve years in the pioneering development of digital cellular technology. Subsequently, he was Vice-Chairman of Geotek Communications, and was Chairman of the company's engineering joint venture with the Rafael Armament Development Authority, a branch of the Government of Israel, based in Haifa, to develop a spread spectrum frequency-hopping radio system for fleet radio communications. Most recently, Dr. Calhoun was the Chairman and CEO of Illinois Superconductor Corporation (AMEX: ISO), a public company focused on the application of high-temperature superconducting materials and advanced signal processing techniques to the suppression of interference in wireless networks. Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaDeskFNW