Lunch with Matt Pottinger

Matt Pottinger is a principal at Garnaut Global, an open-source research firm with a focus on China. He is also a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair of the China Program at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Previously, Matt served as U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, Matt coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. Before that he served as the NSC’s Senior Director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, and in particular its shift on China policy.

Before his White House service, Matt spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, Matt ran Asia research at Davidson Kempner Capital Management, a multi-strategy investment fund in New York. He is a Principal at Garnaut Global LLC, a leading open-source research firm that focuses on China and serves asset managers and corporate clients.

He is the author of The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan.