Kevin Xu

Kevin Xu is the founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in the digital picks and shovels of the global AI economy. He also writes the Interconnected newsletter, a bilingual English/Chinese newsletter on tech, business, and geopolitics. His insight has been cited in WSJ, NYT, FT, Wired, among other media outlets. He previously worked as a senior executive at GitHub, open source startups, early stage VC, and served in the White House and Commerce Department under President Obama. 

Johanna Costigan

Johanna Costigan is a writer, editor, and researcher focused on China’s technology development and regulation. She has written for outlets including the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, Foreign Policy, China Books Review, Rest of World, Project Syndicate, ChinaFile, Nikkei Asia, The Diplomat, and others. She is a regular contributor to Forbes and writes a newsletter on science, technology, and history in China called The Long Game. She has worked on writing and editing projects for the United Nations, Trivium China, the Asia Society Policy Institute, the National Committee on US-China Relations, DigiChina, the Berggruen Institute, and others.  

Johanna has an MsC in contemporary Chinese studies from the University of Oxford, where her dissertation focused on social media discourse of state-sponsored depictions of China’s role in World War II (The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression). She completed the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and studied abroad at Qingdao University. At Bard College, she double majored in East Asian studies with a focus on Chinese language and literature and written arts.  

Wenchi Yu

Wenchi Yu is a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and a global affairs advisor and business operator specializing in cross-border and market access strategies between Asia and the United States. She is also an international affairs commentator for TVBS News – a Taipei-headquartered media outlet with mostly Chinese-language viewers globally. Her business experiences include high-growth global technology companies where she advises on public policy, social impact, and public relations, as well as Goldman Sachs where she headed strategic philanthropy and stakeholder engagement in Asia. Before joining the private sector, she worked in the US Department of State and US Congress.

Namrata Goswami

Dr. Namrata Goswami is an author, professor and consultant specializing in space policy, international relations and ethnic identity. She teaches at the Joint Special Forces University, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, and is a consultant for Space Fund Intelligence. She is a guest lecturer at Emory University for seminars on Technology, Society & Governance and India today. She worked as Research Fellow at MP-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi; a visiting Fellow at Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway; La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; University of Heidelberg, Germany; Jennings-Randolph Senior Fellow, United States Institute of Peace; and was a Fulbright Senior Fellowship Awardee. She was awarded the Minerva grant by Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense to study great power competition in outer space. In April 2019, Dr. Goswami testified before the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s space program. Her co-authored book, Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space was published 2020 by Lexington Press; Rowman and Littlefield. Her book on The Naga Ethnic Movement for a Separate Homeland was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press.  She has published widely to include in The Diplomat, the Economic Times, The Washington Post, Ad Astra, Asia Policy, Live Encounters Magazine,

Abigail Coplin

Dr. Abigail Coplin’s research analyzes the development of China’s biotechnology and agrobiotechnology industries to unpack how scientific innovation, business, and regime legitimacy co-evolve in the contemporary People’s Republic of China, how the Chinese state contends with scientific experts and incorporates expertise in its governance schemes, and how China’s pursuit of high-tech development is restructuring relationships among Chinese society, industry, and the party-state.  Dr. Coplin holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University, an M.A. in Regional Studies of East Asia from Harvard University, and a B.S. in Chemistry and East Asian Studies from Yale University. She is a National Committee Public Intellectuals Program fellow.

Jeffrey Ding

Jeffrey Ding is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, sponsored by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. 

His research agenda centers on technological change and international politics. His dissertation investigates how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers, with implications for U.S.-China competition in emerging technologies like AI. Other research projects tackle how states should identify strategic technologies, assessments of national scientific and technological capabilities, and interstate cooperation on nuclear safety and security technologies. His research has been published or is forthcoming in European Journal of International Security, Foreign Affairs, Review of International Political Economy, and Security Studies, and his work has been cited in The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and other outlets. 

He received his PhD in 2021 from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Previously, he worked as a researcher for Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and Oxford’s Centre for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxford. Growing up in Iowa City, he became a lifelong Hawkeye fan and attended the University of Iowa for his undergraduate studies.