James Shinn

Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense

James Shinn was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia in 2007-08. Before his work at the Pentagon, he served as the national intelligence officer for East Asia in 2003-2006, first at the Central Intelligence Agency and then for the director of National Intelligence. After serving in the East Asia Bureau of the US Department of State in the 1970s, he spent 15 years working in high tech firms, first at Advanced Micro Devices, and then at Dialogic, of which he is a co-founded. Shinn was senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1992-1996.

Shinn is the author of Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China (1996), and co-author of Political Power and Corporate Control (with Peter Alexis Gourevitch, 2005).