Dr. John Steinbruner

National Security Expert

United States

Dr. John Steinbruner was a professor of public policy and director of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. He was also chairman of the board of the Arms Control Association and co-chair of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He sat in the Council on Foreign Relations and was previously a member of the Defense Policy Board of the U.S. Department of Defense. From 1978 to 1996, he was director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Steinbruner served as a professor on the faculties of Yale University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a nationally recognized expert on foreign policy issues, with particular expertise in arms control, defense planning and international security.

Dr. Steinbruner passed away on April 16, 2015.

Dr. K. Subrahmanyam

National Security Expert

India

The late Dr. K. Subrahmanyam was a well-known Indian strategic analyst and journalist. Subrahmanyam graduated from Madras University in 1950 and soon after joined the Indian Administrative Service. In several periods of tenure, he served as the director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), the premier Indian think tank in international relations. He also held a number of other important government positions, including chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He wrote many books and articles on foreign policy and security issues, and was well known for his commentaries in Indian newspapers.

Dr. Subrahmanyam passed away on February 2, 2011.

Hon. Strobe Talbott

National Security Expert

United States

The Honorable Strobe Talbott is president of The Brookings Institution. He is an experienced public servant and journalist with special expertise in the areas of nuclear arms control and U.S.-Russian relations. Talbott wrote a series of three books on U.S.-Soviet arms control and, after 21 years as a journalist for TIME magazine, he entered the government as special adviser to the secretary of state for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. He later served as deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001.

Dr. Horst Teltschik

National Security Expert

Germany

Dr. Horst Teltschik is a German politician and business manager. He served as national security advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl and held a number of other important positions in the German government. From 1999 to 2008, he chaired the Munich Conference on Security Policy, which hosts the premier global international security event bringing security professionals and decision-makers together. He is a former president of Boeing Germany and also served as chief executive officer of the Bertelsmann Foundation.

Dr. Evgeny Velikhov

National Security Expert

Russia

Dr. Evgeny Velikhov is an accomplished Russian scientist in the field of plasma and thermonuclear controlled fusion and is the current president of the National Research Center at the Kurchatov Institute and head of the Public Chamber of Russia. Since the mid-1970s, he has been the head of scientific studies on thermonuclear controlled fusion in the USSR and Russia. From 1977 to 1996, Velikhov served as vice president of the Soviet/Russian Academy of Sciences and in 1986 he oversaw the cleanup of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Velikhov has also been a principal arms control negotiator, having major impact on the development of U.S.-Russian nuclear treaties in the 1980s and 1990s.

Velikhov is a member of the Global Zero Commission.

Dr. Frank von Hippel

National Security Expert

United States

Dr. Frank von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University, where he is co-founder and co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security. He currently serves on the national advisory board of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. He is also the co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. A trained nuclear physicist, he previously served as assistant director of national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he played a major role in developing the International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation Program. From 1983 to 1991, he served as chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, an agency that collaborated with the Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace and Against the Nuclear Threat to provide technical support for Gorbachev’s nonproliferation initiatives, such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He has worked extensively on policy proposals relating to the control of nuclear materials, providing the technical framework necessary to make nonproliferation efforts a reality. He has won numerous awards for his work, including a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Hilliard Roderick Prize for Excellence in Science, Arms Control and International Security.

Prof. Wang Jisi

National Security Expert

China

Professor Wang Jisi is the dean of the School of International Studies and director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University. He is a member of the foreign policy advisory committee of the Foreign Ministry of China and president of the Chinese Administration for American Studies. He is a former professor of the National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army and the former director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies at the Central Party School, the most prestigious training institution for Communist Party officials. Wang is a founding member of the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles and an advisory council member of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution. He is also on the editorial boards of “The American Interest,” “Global Asia” and several Chinese scholarly journals. He was named one of 2012’s 100 Top Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy for his work in relaying Chinese views of America.

Mr. Jon Wolfsthal

National Security Expert

United States

Jon Wolfsthal is Senior Advisor to Global Zero and director of the Nuclear Crisis Group. From 2014 to 2017, he served as special assistant to former U.S. president Barack Obama and senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council. He has also served as special adviser to then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for nuclear security and nonproliferation and as a director for nonproliferation on the National Security Council. He supported the Obama administration’s negotiation and ratification of the New START arms reduction agreement with the Russian Federation, and helped support the development of nuclear policy, including through the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.