About the Authors
Christopher Ankersen is a clinical professor of global affairs at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, where he leads the global risk specialization. Prior to joining NYU in 2017, Dr. Ankersen worked at the United Nations; was a consultant to businesses, governments, and militaries; and served as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, deploying on missions with the UN and NATO. Christopher Ankersen holds a BA (hons) in international politics and history from Royal Roads Military College (Canada) and an MSc and PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Yair Ansbacher has been serving in the IDF’s Special Operations Forces for two decades. He is a senior research associate for defence at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Israel. A postgraduate student at Bar-Ilan University, Mr. Ansbacher’s doctoral thesis is on the impact of SOF on the modern battlefield.
Stephen J. Cimbala is distinguished professor of political science, Penn State Brandywine, an American Studies Faculty member, and is the author of numerous books and articles in the fields of international security studies, defence policy, nuclear weapons and arms control, and intelligence. He received bis BA in journalism from Penn State University in 1965. Steve received an MA and PhD (1969) in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He serves on the editorial boards of various professional journals, has consulted for a number of government agencies and defence contractors, and is frequently quoted in the media on national security topics.
Maddie D’Agata received her PhD in social-personality psychology from Queen’s University in 2017 and has been employed by the Department of National Defence since 2016. From 2017 to 2022, she was a defence scientist in the Intelligence, Influence, and Collaboration Section at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Toronto Research Centre. She conducted research in two main areas: mental health and influence activities. Her work on influence activities was focused on identifying what makes individuals susceptible to being influenced within the cyber context. She is now responsible for leading a team that enables the broadened awareness and communication of DND/CAF’s evidence-based research findings on conduct and culture such that they are actionable by decision makers and senior leadership.
Molly Ellenberg is a research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. Molly is a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Maryland. She holds an MA in forensic psychology from the George Washington University and a BS in psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology from UC San Diego. Her research focuses on radicalization to and de-radicalization from militant jihadist and white supremacist violent extremism, the quest for significance, and intolerance of uncertainty. Molly has presented original research at NATO Advanced Research Workshops and Advanced Training Courses, the International Summit on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma, the GCTC International Counter Terrorism Conference, UC San Diego Research Conferences, and for security professionals in the European Union.
Leandre R. Fabrigar is a professor of psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He has co-authored more than 110 publications. Most of his publications fall within the domain of the psychology of attitudes and persuasion or within the domain of research methodology. Dr. Fabrigar’s research has appeared in a number of journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the Personality and Social Psychology Review, Psychological Science, the Psychological Bulletin, and Psychological Methods. He has been elected to membership in the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology and is a fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Midwestern Psychological Association. Dr. Fabrigar has served as an associate editor for the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and as co-editor for the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Rachel Lea Heide works for Canada’s Department of National Defence as a defence scientist/strategic analyst in Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Operational Research and Analysis. Foci include space, pilot shortages, peace support operations, capacity building, information operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, future security trends, concept development, war gaming, terrorism and counter-insurgency, and war diary research. Dr. Heide is also an air force historian, specializing in the period from 1916 to 1946. She has researched air force organization, training, leadership, morale, professionalization, mutinies, accident investigation, and government policy. She has also instructed distance learning courses in Canadian history and Canadian military history for Algonquin College, the Canadian Forces College, and the Royal Military College.
Nicole J. Jackson is associate professor at the School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. She teaches and researches in the areas of security studies and foreign policy analysis, concentrating in particular on Russia and Central Asia. Her first book, Russian Foreign Policy and the CIS: Theories, Debates and Actions, examined Russian ideas and debates over military involvement in Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan. Most of her research focuses on Russia’s involvement in the post-Soviet space, including the securitization of trafficking in Central Asia, Russia’s policies toward Central Asia, and Russia’s involvement in regional organizations. More recently she has written on Russia’s approach to outer space and NATO and Canadian approaches to hybrid threats and disinformation. She is currently writing on countering disinformation in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as a comparative analysis of Russia’s military involvement in the former Soviet space.
Pierre Jolicoeur is full professor in the Department of Political Science at Royal Military College of Canada. Specialist of the former Soviet Union and southeastern Europe, his research focuses on secessionist movements, foreign policy, federalism, and cyber security. At RMCC, he teaches international relations and comparative politics. Through NATO programs, he also taught in Moldova and in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Author or co-author of 2 books, 10 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 23 book chapters, his publications, in both French and English, have appeared in Études internationales, the Journal of Borderland Studies, the Canadian Journal of 360Foreign Policy, and Connections. He has also contributed to the public debate, notably by publishing 29 articles in the Point de mire series, which he edited between 2000 and 2006, contributing 20 op-eds (Le Devoir, La Presse, Whig Standard), and giving numerous interviews. He has been the RMCC representative to the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences since 2011.
Christian Leuprecht is a Class of 1965 Distinguished Professor in Leadership, Department of Political Science and Economics, Royal Military College, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Military Journal, director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations in the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute, and adjunct research professor in the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University.
Adam Lowther is director of Strategic Deterrence Programs at the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska, US Strategic Command’s university-affiliated research centre. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Alabama. Adam previously taught at the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies. He also served as the founding director of the School of Advanced Nuclear Deterrence Studies, Kirtland AFB. Dr. Lowther was also the director of the Center for Academic and Professional Journals at the Air Force Research Institute (AFRI), Maxwell AFB. Prior to assuming this position, Adam was a research professor at AFRI, where he led and participated in a number of studies directed by the chief of staff of the air force. Early in his career, Dr. Lowther served in the US Navy aboard the USS Ramage (DDG-61). He also served at CINCUSNAVEUR-London and with NMCB 17.
Sara Meharg is a global authority on the economic, cultural, and security reconstruction of post-disaster and post-conflict environments. Dr. Meharg is assistant professor at the Canadian Forces College and is the recent recipient of the prestigious Top Women in Defence and Security 2020 award. She is a recognized expert in managing the competing interests of defence, diplomacy, and development stakeholders in post-disaster and post-conflict planning. Dr. Meharg has extensive teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and of note, with more than 1,100 senior military officers and civil servants, in institutional, operational, and cross-cultural contexts across national and international settings. She holds a bachelor of landscape architecture from the University of Guelph, a master of arts in war studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, and a PhD in cultural geography from Queen’s University, where she studied the intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites during contemporary armed warfare. Dr. Meharg has served as a research fellow with organizations such as the Centre for Security and Defence Studies, the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and the Security and Defence Forum.
Eric Ouellet is full professor of leadership, command, and management with the Department of Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada as well as the Canadian Forces College (CFC). He is currently the academic lead for the Centre for National Security Studies, located at CFC. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Université Laval, Quebec City, and a PhD from York University, Toronto. His academic research and publications cover issues such as disinformation, institutional analysis and theory, organizational theory, counter-insurgency, military adaptation to irregular warfare, post-heroic warfare, special operation forces, defence planning, terrorist organizations, military sociology, and anomalous aerial phenomena. He is member of the international board of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.
Ronald D. Porter (Major, Ret.) has developed expertise in attitude measurement and personnel selection in both academic and applied collaborations. He has published in the areas of attitude measurement, exploratory factor analysis, and personnel selection. Presently, Dr. Porter is an adjunct professor at Queen’s University. Previously, he served in the Canadian Forces, where he developed an officer-selection process and validated several selection instruments as a member of the CF Human Resources research unit before being posted to the Royal Military College (RMC) as an assistant professor. At RMC, Dr. Porter conducted research in army culture, instrument psychometric assessment, and psychological operations. His academic experience also includes appointments as an associate professor at St. Mary’s University and a senior lecturer at York St. John University in the United Kingdom.
Ron Schleifer is a senior lecturer at the School of Communication of Ariel University of Samaria, Israel, and is a renowned authority on psychological warfare. His books and articles deal with psychological warfare and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. He taught at the IDF Command College, and lectures and trains defence organizations on issues of information warfare both in Israel and abroad.
Anthony Seaboyer is director of the Centre for Security, Armed Forces and Society at the Royal Military College of Canada, where he teaches political science, political philosophy, and political geography. He is a senior lecturer at the Peace Support Training Centre teaching adversary information exploitation and information weaponization. At the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research of the Friedrich-Alexander Universität, he researches the effects of government AI exploitation for influence operations. He is a regular guest commentator on national security for CTV News Channel and a contracted national security commentator for the CBC News Network. His research focuses on national security regarding information warfare, AI for influence operations, social influence, psychological warfare, persuasion, social media exploitation, armed non-state actors, as well as the effects of the weaponization of information and AI on democracies.
Minqian Shen is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University. He works in the Attitudes and Persuasion Lab under Dr. Leandre Fabrigar. His research focuses on attitude structure, the role of vocal properties in persuasion, and attitude measurement. Minqian holds a bachelor of science with a specialization in psychology from the University of Toronto and a master’s of science in social psychology from Queen’s University. His master’s thesis focused on the structure and sequencing of information and its effects on persuasion. He is interested in the application of social psychology theory to practical domains of society and industry. Minqian’s other interests include teaching, having taught statistics courses at Saint Lawrence College.
Anne Speckhard, PhD, is director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. She serves as adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and an affiliate in the Center for Security Studies, Georgetown University. She has interviewed over 800 terrorists and violent extremists, as well as their family members and supporters around the world, including in western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. Over the past five years, she has conducted in-depth psychological interviews with 273 ISIS defectors, returnees, and prisoners, and 16 al Shabaab cadres (as well as family members and ideologues,) studying their trajectories into and out of terrorism, and their experiences inside ISIS and al Shabaab.
Keith Stewart works at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Toronto Research Centre. In a thirty-year career that has included periods in private industry and government service, he has focused on human-centric research issues, including influence operations, human elements of military command, and human error in high-hazard environments. He has worked previously on theoretical analysis of command approach, an examination of non-technical interoperability in the command and control of multinational forces, and an investigation of organizational structures in net-enabled organizations.
Joseph Szeman is a political studies and history graduate of Queen’s University at Kingston, where he has conducted research on the strategic culture of middle powers, cyber operations, and deterrence and coercion in cyberspace.
Alex Wilner is an associate professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Canada. His research explores the nexus between deterrence and emerging security considerations and domains. His books include Deterrence by Denial (co-edited with Andreas Wenger, Cambria Press, 2021), Deterring Rational Fanatics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), and Deterring Terrorism (co-edited with Andreas Wenger, Stanford University Press, 2012). His articles have been published in top-ranked journals, including International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and Security Studies. His scholarship has been awarded nearly $2 million in funding, including a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2016–17), a SSHRC Insight Grant (2020–5), and a Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award (2021–6) for his cyber-deterrence project; two IDEaS grants (2018–21) and several Department of National Defence MINDS grants (2019, 2020) in support of his AI-deterrence project; and a major Mitacs grant (2020–2) and MINDS Collaborative Network grant to explore Canadian defence and emerging technology.