CAPT Mark Asuncion is currently a military professor at the U.S. Naval War College. As a career naval officer, he has extensive experience in political-military affairs, to include military attache tours in Colombia, Mexico, and Libya, NATO policy chief on the U.S. Joint Staff, senior military advisor for East Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Department of State, and as the Senior U.S. Government Official in Vanuatu. He has extensive operational experience in the Indo-Pacific as the Chief of Strategy and Engagement at the U.S. 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan. He holds. BA in Economics from UC Berkeley, an MPA from Harvard University, and a Post-Graduate Diploma from Oxford University.

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Bryce Barros is an Associate Fellow at GLOBSEC’s GeoTech Center, where his research focuses on the convergence of Indo-Pacific, Euro-Atlantic, and emerging technologies with security. He previously served in the U.S. Senate as National Security Advisor on foreign policy and defense, supported the Defense Innovation Unit as a contractor, analyzed China and Taiwan’s roles in the Transatlantic relationship at the German Marshall Fund, and researched strategic trade controls and sanctions at Kharon.

Bryce is a Council on Foreign Relations Stephen M. Kellen Term Member, a Truman National Security Project Fellow, a National Committee on U.S.-China Relations member, and a Pacific Forum Young Leader. He holds degrees from Norwich University and Texas A&M University, is an honorary graduate of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Military Academy, and speaks Mandarin, Japanese, and Portuguese. He currently resides in Taiwan. He has lived and worked in both Taiwan and China for six years.

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Dr. Hunter Marston is an Adjunct (Non-resident) Fellow with the Center for Strategic & International Studies Southeast Asia Program. His research focuses on great power competition in Southeast Asia, Indo-Pacific security and alliances, and U.S. foreign policy. He is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe Asia and an Associate with 9DashLine. He was a 2021 nonresident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu and the recipient of a Robert J. Myers Fellows Fund from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Previously he was a Senior Research Assistant for the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and a researcher with the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Southeast Asia program. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia-Pacific Affairs as well as a MA in Southeast Asia Studies and Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington. In 2012 he was a Harold Rosenthal Fellow in International Relations in the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Contemporary Southeast Asia, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

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Brian Harding is a leading expert on U.S.-Southeast Asia relations and East Asia regional security with nearly twenty years of experience in government and think tanks in Washington, DC. He is currently a research fellow at the Southeast Asia Peace Institute, a senior fellow (non-resident) at Sasakawa USA, and a senior advisor at the U.S.-Philippines Society.

From 2020 to 2025, Brian led a major expansion of programming in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands at the U.S. Institute of Peace, including the establishment of new offices in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea. In the Philippines, USIP collaborated with the Government of the Philippines and non-government partners on initiatives to deepen U.S.-Philippines alliance coordination on regional security challenges and to sustain peace in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Previously, Brian was deputy director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director for Asia policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP). From 2009 to 2013, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as country director for Asian and Pacific security affairs, managing defense relations with key U.S. partners in Southeast Asia and Oceania.

Brian holds degrees from Middlebury College and The George Washington University, has studied in Indonesia and Japan, and was a Fulbright research fellow in Indonesia.

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Sasha B. Chhabra is a visiting research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei. An expert in US-Taiwan relations, cross-strait affairs, and Chinese influence operations, his research encompasses Taiwan’s strategic diplomacy and foreign communications. He has advised national political campaigns in the United States and has worked in non-profit, media, and government sectors. He is a frequent media commentator and columnist, whose work has been published in newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and regularly contributes to Taiwanese media, including the Taipei Times and CommonWealth Magazine. In addition to Mandarin Chinese, he speaks Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and is conversational in Uyghur.

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Dr. Annette Bradford is Education and Policy Advisor at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS). She recently completed a fellowship with the Japan Foundation Indo-Pacific Partnership Program, researching the implementation of education and training capacity-building activities in the maritime domain. Annette also consults for Oxford EMI, a leading consultancy and training organization for higher education internationalization and English-medium Instruction (EMI) teacher professional development. Annette holds an EdD in Educational Administration and Policy Studies from the George Washington University, an MA in Linguistics from the University of Surrey, and a BA in Modern Languages from the University of East Anglia.

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John F. Bradford is a Japan Foundation Indo-Pacific Partnerships Fellow, the Executive Director of the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS) and an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). He has previously held research positions with the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in Jakarta and Tokyo. His research focuses on Asian security with special attention given to maritime issues and cooperative affairs. Before becoming a full-time community builder and researcher, he spent more than twenty-three years as a U.S. Navy officer. His naval service history included command of a ballistic missile defense-capable Aegis destroyer and assignment at the 7th Fleet Regional Cooperation Coordinator and Country Director for Japan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy). John holds a PhD from King’s College London. As an Olmsted Scholar, he studied in the Department of Political Science at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia and completed an MSc (Strategic Studies) from RSIS. He is also a graduate of Japan’s National Institute of Defence Studies and the US Naval War College and Cornell University. He is particularly proud of the training he received as a midshipman aboard the Royal Malaysian Navy ship KD Rahmat.

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Mr Carl Baker is executive director at Pacific Forum. He works on issues related to foreign and security policy and is engaged in promoting security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. Current focus areas include multilateral security architecture, nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear security. Previously, he was on the faculty at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and an adjunct professor at Hawaii Pacific University. Previously, he was on the faculty at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and an adjunct professor at Hawaii Pacific University. A graduate of the U.S. Air War College, he also holds an M.A. in public administration from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Iowa.

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Brad GLOSSERMAN is Senior Adviser at Pacific Forum, in Honolulu Hi, where he served for 13 years (2004-2017) as executive director. From 2017 until 2025, when it closed, he was Deputy Director of and Visiting Professor at the Center for Rule-making Strategies, Tama University. He was for 10 years a member of The Japan Times editorial board and writes a weekly column on geopolitics and technology. Brad is co-author, with Gil Rozman, of Japan’s Rise as a Regional and Global Power 2013-2023: A Momentous Decade (Routledge, 2024), author of Peak Japan: The End of Grand Ambitions (Georgetown UP, 2019) and co-author (with Scott Snyder) of The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash (Columbia UP 2015). His newest book, “Tech-gemony: Navigating the New National Security Economy” (with David Lee), which examines the geopolitics of high-technology, will be published this year by Hurst.

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