Sean McFate, PhD, is an author, strategist, and scholar of modern statecraft and future warfare. He holds professorships at the National Defense University College of International Security Affairs and Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He was previously on the faculty of the Syracuse University Maxwell School and served as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
McFate is an authority on mercenaries and irregular warfare. He advises senior national security leaders, government entities, and private sector leadership on strategic conflict.
His career began as a paratrooper and officer in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, followed by years as a private military contractor leading complex operations across Africa and Eastern Europe.
Following his military service, he served as Vice President at the political risk firm TD International, a social scientist at RAND, and a Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford.
His non-fiction books include the forthcoming Fire Starters: How America Can Defeat Autocrats Without Starting World War III (St. Martin's Press, 2027), The New Rules of War (Morrow), and The Modern Mercenary (Oxford University Press). He also authored three national security novels, prompting James Patterson to call him "the next Tom Clancy, only... even better."
His analysis appears across every major English-speaking news network, leading national publications, and policy journals, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and War on the Rocks.
McFate holds a BA from Brown University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics.