ABOUT US

General McMaster is a preeminent voice on leadership, global security, and international affairs, recognized for his leadership in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served as the U.S. National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018.

McMaster was commissioned upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1984. He retired as a Lieutenant General in 2018 after 34 years of service. His command assignments in the United States Army include: Commanding General, Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning; Commander, Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force Shafafiyat (Transparency) in Kabul, Afghanistan; and Commander, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Carson, Colorado and Iraq.

McMaster serves as the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies and a lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Charles Carmakal is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at cybersecurity leader, Mandiant. For two decades, he has helped organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, build and enhance security programs to combat advanced cyber-attacks. Carmakal and his team have helped over a thousand organizations respond to complex security breaches orchestrated by foreign governments, organized criminals, and political hacktivists.

Carmakal frequently provides strategic security guidance to executive leadership and boards of directors. Prior to joining Mandiant (previously FireEye), he served in various leadership roles with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the United States and Australia.

Sue Gordon served as the fifth Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) from August 2017 to August 2019. In that role, Gordon was a key advisor to the President and National Security Council and led the then 17-member Intelligence Community (IC). During her tenure, Gordon focused on advancing intelligence integration across the IC, expanding outreach and partnerships, and driving innovation across the community. Prior to the DNI, Sue served as the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2015 to 2017, where she modernized operations, championed agile decision-making, and expanded geospatial intelligence into the commercial domain.

Before joining the NGA, Gordon served for 27 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rising to senior executive positions in each of the Agency’s four directorates: operations, analysis, science and technology, and support. In 1998, she designed and drove the formation of In-Q-Tel, a private, non-profit company whose primary purpose is to deliver innovative technology solutions for the agency and the IC.

Gordon is the recipient of numerous government and industry awards, including the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award. A trusted authority on strategy, innovation and leadership, Gordon is currently a consultant on global risk, technology, cyber and space issues and a university fellow. Gordon earned a Bachelor of Science from Duke University.

Robert C. O’Brien currently serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and is the cofounder and chairman of American Global Strategies LLC. As the 27th U.S. National Security Advisor from 2019 to 2021, O’Brien served as former President Trump’s principal advisor on all aspects of American foreign policy and national security affairs.

Before serving as NSA, he was the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs with the personal rank of Ambassador. In that capacity, O’Brien was directly involved in the return of over 25 detainees and hostages to the United States. He also previously served as Co-Chairman of the U.S. Department of State’s Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan under both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In 2005, O’Brien was nominated by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a U.S. representative to the 60th session of the UN General Assembly. Earlier in his career, O’Brien served as a senior legal officer for the UN Security Council commission that decided claims against Iraq arising out of the first Gulf War. He was a major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve.

In July 2022, O’Brien was elected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Richard Nixon Foundation. He serves as co-chair of the Nixon Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security and is also Co-Founder and Partner Emeritus at Larson LLP in Los Angeles, a nationally recognized litigation boutique.

O’Brien holds a JD from the UC Berkeley School of Law. He received his BA in political science, cum laude, from UCLA.

Takashi Ito is the former Senior General Manager of the Corporate Economic Security Division at Mitsubishi Electric. This division was recognized as Japan’s first dedicated economic security department within a private company when Ito established it in 2020. Having joined Mitsubishi Electric in 1986, Ito participated in the reorganization of the Japanese semiconductor industry.

Ito is regarded as one of Japan’s foremost thought leaders on economic security, having helped shape of the direction of private sector initiatives in this field. Since completing his term at Mitsubishi in March 2025, he is now sharing his economic security knowledge and experience with organizations across various sectors. Ito received his law degree from Keio University in Minato, Japan.

Craig Faller is a retired four star United States Navy Admiral with nearly four decades of global leadership experience. Faller most recently led United States Southern Command where he was responsible for U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean with the primary objective of forging strong security partnerships. He has served in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions both on large staffs and in Command of a United States Navy Carrier Strike Group and two warships. He has extensive Washington, DC experience in the Pentagon and with Congress as the Department of the Navy’s Chief of Legislative Affairs (lead representative to Congress on behalf of the leadership of the Navy). In the Pentagon he served as the senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Faller earned a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering and a master’s in national security affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Admiral Sir Tim Fraser served in the Royal Navy and UK Defence for over 40 years. His final appointment was as the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff in the Ministry of Defence.

A surface warfare officer by background, Sir Tim commanded destroyers and the aircraft carrier HMS ILLUSTRIOUS, led UK and coalition maritime forces in the Middle East, served as Senior British Military Advisor in CENTCOM HQ in Tampa, and the UK’s Chief of Joint Operations.

Sir Tim has also spent significant time over the past 20 years in Ministry of Defence appointments, primarily in programming, planning, and capability development, and was closely involved in the 2015 and 2021 Defence and Security Reviews.

He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.