Andrew Hoehn is Senior Vice President and Director of Research at the RAND Corporation. He was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, responsible for developing and implementing U.S. defense strategy, force planning and assessments, and long-range policy planning.

Thom Shanker is the director of the Project for Media and National Security. He was the National Security/Foreign Policy Editor for the New York Times' Washington Bureau, and is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.