Digital China Wins the Future

David Dorman is a former U.S. government senior executive specializing on China strategy and national security. He served as principal advisor on China to four consecutive U.S. Indo-Pacific Command commanders (Admirals Keating, Willard, Locklear, and Harris), executive director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman Joe Biden, and foreign policy advisor to Senator Chuck Hagel. He also held senior analytic and leadership roles at the National Security Agency, where he served as a senior China program manager, peer-certified master linguist, and peer-certified master intelligence analyst.

Across these roles, his work focused on how Chinese Communist Party strategy translates into institutional design, operational capability, and long-term geopolitical risk, not merely individual policies or technologies, but systems-level transformation.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive for contributions to national-level strategy and policy development. In 2016, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. awarded him the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award for improving the operational effectiveness of the Joint Force.

He holds a Ph.D. in Government and Politics and an M.A. in International Security from the University of Maryland, College Park; an A.M. in East Asian Regional Studies from Harvard University; and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of New Mexico. He later served as a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, where he taught and facilitated strategic dialogue among Indo-Pacific partners and allies on China’s national-level security strategies, strengthening shared understanding of long-term regional risks, opportunities, and strategic responses.