David Kilcullen

ASU Future of War Senior Fellow

Dr. David Kilcullen is Founder and Chairman of Caerus Global Solutions, a strategic research and design firm that helps governments, global institutions, businesses and communities build resiliency in conflict, disaster-affected and post-conflict environments. Caerus teams work in analytical and field modes. They use participative mapping and systems modeling techniques, conduct field research in denied areas, design and deliver training, and conduct capacity-building programs. Caerus operates in Europe, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. He is also Founder and Chairman of First Mile Geo, a Washington DC-based technology startup that pioneers open, online cloud-based platforms for collecting, analyzing, sharing, and visualizing social and spatial data.

Before joining private industry, Dr. Kilcullen served 24 years as an army officer, diplomat and policy advisor for the Australian and United States governments. After serving in command and operational missions (including peacekeeping, counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense) across the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe, he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel of Light Infantry, then served as a senior analyst in the Office of National Assessments, focused on Southeast Asian terrorism, and was a member of the writing team for Australia’s national counterterrorism strategy. In the United States he served on the writing team for the 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review, then as Chief Strategist in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, where he designed the Regional Security Initiative and served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa. He served in Iraq as a member of the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, and as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to Multinational Force—Iraq through 2007, before becoming Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to the Secretary of State in 2008-2009. He was the State Department’s representative on the 2008 Lute Review of Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy, was lead author for the U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Handbook, and founded the ISAF Counterinsurgency Advisory Assistance Team in 2009. Dr Kilcullen was named one of the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009. His bestselling books, The Accidental Guerrilla and Counterinsurgency, are used in universities, and by policy-makers, the military, and development agencies worldwide. His third book, Out of the Mountains, which examines conflict in the connected, coastal cities of the future, was awarded the 2013 American Publishers’ Association Prize for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in Government and Politics.