Christian Brose is currently Chief Strategy Officer of Anduril Industries, a technology start-up that develops national defence capabilities, and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served as Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee (2015-2018), where he was the youngest person to hold the position in the committee’s history. Before that, he served as Senator John McCain’s senior policy advisor (2009-2015). Brose was previously a speechwriter to two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.
Ashley Townshend is Director of Foreign Policy and Defence at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, where he works on strategic affairs with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region. Ashley is also founding convenor and co-chair of the US-Australia Indo-Pacific Deterrence Dialogue and a lecturer in the Centre’s postgraduate program. A frequent contributor to the Australian and international media, Ashley’s analysis has appeared in outlets such as the Financial Times, CNN, the Australian Financial Review, Bloomberg, ABC, and Sky News.