Nathan K. Finney is a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Finney is also an Army strategist. A former armor officer with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he has also served in the headquarters of the Army War Plans Division and at the US Army Pacific in the Commander’s Action Group and War Plans. He was the branch chief for strategy and a special assistant to the commander at the US Indo-Pacific Command.

Finney was a founding executive board member of the Military Writers Guild (and is currently serving as president) and was a founder of The Strategy Bridge and the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. He is a managing editor at the British Journal for Military History, a senior mentor for the Project on International Peace and Security at the College of William & Mary, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Finney was a visiting fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He is the co-editor and author of the book Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics, the editor and author of On Strategy: A Primer, and is publishing a book with Cornell University Press in 2025 titled Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War. Nate is currently researching his latest book, which is focused on Cold War Taiwan.

Finney earned a PhD in history from Duke University in 2022 while also serving as a Goodpaster scholar. Previously, he received master’s degrees in public administration from Harvard University and the University of Kansas, and a BA in anthropology from the University of Arizona.