Speaker biographies

Dan Blumenthal joined AEI in November 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for international security affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In that capacity, he led a team that formulated and implemented defense policies and programs toward, and for, these portfolio countries. Before his service at the Department of Defense, Mr. Blumenthal practiced law in New York and was a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI and is senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle, Washington. He serves on the advisory board of the Korea Economic Institute of America, and is a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Mr. Eberstadt regularly consults for governmental and international organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. State Department, USAID, and World Bank. He has published over 300 studies and articles in scholarly and popular journals, mainly on topics in demography, international development, and East Asian security. His dozen-plus books and monographs include The Poverty of Communism (Transaction, 1988), The Population of North Korea (Institute for East Asian Studies, 1992), The Tyranny of Numbers (AEI Press, 1995), The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999), Korea's Future and the Great Power (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2001) and the forthcoming North Korea's Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (Transaction Books).

James R. Lilley is a senior fellow in Asian studies at AEI. Mr. Lilley was the U.S. ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 1989 to 1991 and to the Republic of Korea from 1986 to 1989. He served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1991 to 1993. He wrote the forewords for the AEI books Chinese Military Modernization, and Over the Line. He is also the coeditor of China's Military Faces the Future (M.E. Sharpe, 1999), Beyond MFN: Trade with China and American Interests (AEI Press, 1994) and Crisis in the Taiwan Strait (National Defense University Press, 1997). Most recently, Mr. Lilley published his memoirs, China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia (PublicAffairs, April 2004), which chronicles three generations of experiences from an American family in the Far East, and also provides a fascinating look at Asia's history, its relationship with the United States, and a special look at China.

Gary J. Schmitt is a resident scholar and director of AEI’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies. Prior to coming to AEI, he helped found and served as executive director of the Project for the New American Century. In the early 1980s, Dr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and, from 1982–84 served as the committee’s minority staff director. In 1984 he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the post of executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He served in that position until 1988. He has since held visiting fellowships at The National Interest and the Brookings Institution, served as coordinator for the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s Working Group on Intelligence Reform, and worked as a consultant to the Department of Defense. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

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