Matthew Pottinger Keynote Speaker

Matthew Pottinger stands at the intersection of journalism, battlefield leadership, and high-level policymaking.

A fluent Mandarin speaker and former Beijing correspondent for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, he spent seven years on the ground reporting China’s rapid rise and early SARS outbreak, winning regional press awards for his coverage. In 2005, he traded a notebook for a rifle, commissioning into the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served three combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and co-authored the influential “Fixing Intel” report that reshaped battlefield intelligence practices.​

Called back to Washington in 2017, Pottinger became the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Asia and later U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, steering a historic recalibration of U.S.-China strategy and sounding some of the first COVID-19 alarms inside the White House. His Mandarin-language May Fourth speech and Capitol-Hill testimony continue to influence U.S. and allied approaches to Beijing.​

Today, as Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Chair of the FDD’s China Program, Pottinger equips leaders with clear-eyed insights on deterrence, supply-chain resilience, and democratic renewal. His 2024 bestseller The Boiling Moat lays out an urgent blueprint to prevent war over Taiwan and has become essential reading for policymakers and boards worldwide. Audiences value his rare blend of frontline experience, boardroom candor, and actionable foresight—attributes that make him a compelling guide to navigating an era defined by strategic competition.