Thomas P.M. Barnett has worked in U.S. national security circles since the end of the Cold War, starting with the Department of Navy’s premier think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses. He then served as professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where he assisted Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski – the father of “network-centric warfare.” After 9/11, Barnett joined Cebrowski’s new Office of Force Transformation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as his Assistant for Strategic Futures. In that capacity, he developed an influential PowerPoint brief on globalization and international security (see his 2005 TED Talk), which later morphed into a New York Times-bestselling book, The Pentagon’s New Map (2004). Barnett extended his “New Map” series with the volumes Blueprint for Action (2005) and Great Powers (2009).

Upon leaving government service in 2005, Dr. Barnett worked for a series of technology start-ups exploring cognitive artificial intelligence, crowdsourced wargaming, and enterprise resilience. He worked for years as a journalist, both as a Contributing Editor at Esquire and a Scripps News syndicated columnist. Barnett was likewise a Visiting Strategist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and later a Senior Research Fellow at the Beijing-based Knowfar Institute for Strategic & Defence Studies.

Thomas presently serves as Principal Business Strategist at Throughline, a Washington DC-based enterprise design and strategy firm that serves the U.S. national security community, major U.S. government agencies, multinational corporations, and non-profits. Dr. Barnett’s 2023 book, America’s New Map, is a unique product of the author’s deep collaboration with the firm’s senior leadership, graphic artists, and content designers.

Over his career, Thomas has generated more than 500 publications and has delivered more than 1,000 speeches across all 50 U.S. states and 50 countries. Dr. Barnett holds a PhD in political science from Harvard University and Green Bay Packers’ season tickets.