Lieutenant Colonel Gary Sampson was a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also a PhD candidate at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where his research examines post-Cold War alliance politics in East Asia.
Sampson serves as an intelligence and international-affairs officer in the US Marine Corps with a focus on northeast Asia. Currently, he is the principal intelligence briefer to the 38th commandant of the US Marine Corps. His previous Pentagon assignments include serving as a Marine Corps plank holder on the red team in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and as a special assistant and chief speechwriter to the 19th and 20th chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Earlier in his military career, Sampson deployed in support of Operations Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom-Philippines.
In 2009, Sampson was an Olmsted Foundation scholar in the port city Kaohsiung in Taiwan, where he earned a master’s degree in social science from National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies. His master’s thesis focused on Chinese conventional military modernization. At the National Intelligence University in Washington, DC , Sampson earned a master’s degree in science of strategic intelligence, writing a research thesis focused on Chinese nuclear weapons capability modernization through 2030. Sampson also served as the fellow of the commandant of the Marine Corps in the International Security Studies Program at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Currently, Sampson serves as a Hans J. Morgenthau fellow in grand strategy at the Notre Dame International Security Center. He is also an external fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. From 2019 to 2020, Sampson served as a member of the sixth cohort of the National Committee on US-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program fellows. Previously, he participated in National Defense University’s Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction Program for Emerging Leaders.
Sampson is a graduate of the University of Nebraska, the Defense Language Institute, National Sun Yat-sen University, and the National Intelligence University. Sampson has taught at George Washington University and Tufts University, and his written work has been published by the International Journal of Korean Studies, Marine Corps History, US Naval Institute Proceedings, the Marine Corps Gazette, Military Review, the Strategy Bridge, Studies in Intelligence, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.