Shashank Joshi Keynote Speaker

Shashank Joshi has been Defence Editor at The Economist since 2018, where he writes on a wide range of national security, defence and intelligence issues. He has led world-class coverage of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, geopolitical tensions in Asia and global issues like nuclear weapons, space security and cyber threats. He is a regular commentator on radio and television, and has more than 200,000 followers on X.  From August 2026, he will be The Economist’s Washington Bureau Chief, based in DC. 

Shashank was previously a senior fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, where he now serves on the Advisory Board. He has also spent time at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Programme (CCW), which studies how armed conflicts are evolving.

In addition to his academic positions, Shashank has given lectures to the UK Defence Academy, the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and NATO. He has also frequently given expert evidence to the House of Commons and House of Lords committees on foreign affairs and defence.

He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, newspapers and magazines including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Guardian and of course the Economist. He has also written books on Iran’s nuclear programme and India’s growing military capabilities. He holds degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, where he served as a Kennedy Scholar from Britain to the United States.

In his time at The Economist, Shashank has reported from Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, among dozens of other countries. He has written widely on issues ranging from AI-guided drones, ransomware and cyber-attacks, the vulnerability of undersea cables and the spread of missiles in the Middle East. He presents Inside Defence, a monthly show which has featured high-profile generals, spy chiefs and officials. His weekly newsletter, ‘The War Room’, is widely read among defence insiders and reaches more than 90,000 Economist subscribers every week.

He has hosted The Intelligence, the magazine’s flagship podcast, and interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, Boris Johnson, Britain’s former prime minister, and Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, among dozens of other senior officials. His cover stories for The Economist have covered the war in Ukraine, the return of sea power, Pentagon reform and European defence.