Drew Holliday

Drew Holliday is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Holliday retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) following forty-seven years of service in the intelligence community. He spent the thirty years prior to retirement in a variety of China-focused assignments, with about half that time serving in Washington, DC, and half serving at the US embassy in Beijing. He also served as the deputy defense intelligence officer for China (influence and perceptions) at the DIA’s China Mission Group. Previously, he was the acting chief of intelligence, DIA Directorate for Operations; division chief and deputy director of operations at the DIA Asia-Pacific Regional Center; chief of DIA’s China House; chief of the Global Coverage and Hard Targets Branch, DIA Directorate for Operations; and as the lead analyst for China technology transfer issues.

At the US embassy in Beijing, he served three tours in the Defense Attaché Office as a staff member, as the office’s first defense civilian attaché, as chief of staff, and as senior civilian attaché and senior advisor.

Before turning to China, Holliday’s military career focused on the Cold War, with duty in Berlin, where he was on the ground for the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent German unification; and in Moscow, where he served during the 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.

He has a bachelor of arts degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland and a master of science degree in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University.