J. Michael Cole is the Taipei-based Senior Advisor on Countering Foreign Authoritarian Influence (CFAI) at the International Republican Institute (IRI) in Washington, D.C.; Senior Fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C., the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Canada, and the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham, U.K.; and Research Fellow at the Prospect Foundation in Taipei, Taiwan. Prior to moving to Taiwan in 2005, he was an intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Ottawa. He has a Master’s degree in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. He was co-founder and editor at large for the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy’s Taiwan Democracy Bulletin. Between 2014 and 2016, he was Editor in Chief of Thinking Taiwan, a commentary and analysis website run by Tsai Ing-wen’s Thinking Taiwan Foundation. He was Deputy News Editor at the Taipei Times from 2010 to 2013, and an editor between 2006-2010. His work has appeared in various publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia, Christian Science Monitor, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Jane’s Intelligence Review, IISS Military Balance, The Globe and Mail, and The Toronto Star. His latest book, Insidious Power: How China Undermines Global Democracy (co-edited with Szuchien Hsu), was published in 2020.
The Trump administration will eventually awaken to the fact that Beijing cannot, and has no desire to, deliver on North Korea.