Future Security Forum
Rethinking global security
The Future Security Forum is the Future Security Initiative’s premier annual event. It is held in Washington, D.C. (and managed virtually from 2020-2022 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic). The Forum is jointly organized by ASU and New America and brings together thought leaders from academia, the military, the U.S. government, civil society, the media, industry, and foreign governments to address pressing global security issues. We began organizing the Future Security Forum in 2015 (previously called the Future of War Conference) and the event is now an institutionalized part of the Washington, DC national security calendar. In this way, the Forum elevates ASU’s profile as a major university contributor to debates on security issues, global policy, and the possibility of developing creative solutions to complex challenges, now and into the future. We are now preparing for our 12th annual Forum and, over the life of these meetings, we have featured over 300 speakers, had over 4,000 in-person attendees and over 30,000 viewers via livestream.
Co-sponsors of the event have included Security & Defence Plus (an academic partnership between ASU, King’s College London, and the University of New South Wales Sydney), Small Wars Journal, Global Special Operations Foundation, Joint Special Operations University, and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. And, we have had media co-sponsors, including CNN and Defense One. The forum has received coverage from CNN, Defense One, Politico, The Hill, Military Times, New Yorker, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Fox News, Army Times, and Stars and Stripes among other publications.
The Forum is opened each year by ASU and New America leadership, including Michael Crow, ASU President, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America CEO, as well as James O’Brien, Senior Vice President of University Affairs and Chief of Staff to President Crow, and Paul E. Butler, President & Chief Transformation Officer at New America. The Forum is led by Peter Bergen and Daniel Rothenberg, Future Security Initiative Co-Directors, with support from multiple ASU and New America colleagues, and assistance and participation from ASU undergraduate and graduate students.
The forum receives widespread media coverage, including from CNN, Defense One, Politico, The Hill, Military Times, New Yorker, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Fox News, Army Times, and Stars and Stripes, and other media.
Upcoming Future Security Forum:
12th annual Future Security Forum, September 15, 2026
The next Forum is entitled “25 Years After September 11: Lessons from America’s Post-9/11 Wars.” The conference will examine the successes and failures of American counterterrorism and the impact of conflict on those living where the wars have been fought. The Forum brings together key thought leaders and showcases the extensive work that ASU and New America have done on providing informative analysis of U.S. policy, assessing the last two and a half decades to better understand how to respond to current and future challenges. More information on the event will be available shortly.
Future Security Forum speakers have included:
Military – Maj. Gen. Steven G. Edwards, Commander, Special Operations Command Europe; Gen. David L. Goldfein, Chief of Staff of the Air Force; Adm, Christopher W. Grady, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Adm. Michelle Howard, Vice Chief, U.S. Navy; Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army; Gen. John M. Murray, Army Futures Command; Gen. Paul Nakasone, Commander, U.S. Cyber Command and Director, National Security Agency; Gen. Robert B. Neller, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps; Gen. John W. Raymond, Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force; Adm. John M. Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy.
U.S. Civilian Government (current and former) – Christine Abizaid, Former Director, National Counterterrorism Center; Gina Bennett, Retired CIA Senior Analyst; Amb. Roger Carstens, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs; Janine Davidson Undersecretary for the U.S. Navy; Jen Easterly, Director, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Evelyn Farkas, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Joshua A. Geltzer, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Homeland Security Advisor; Tom Malinowski, Assistant Secretary of State; Brett McGurk, Former White House Coordinator for the Middle East; LTG (Ret.) H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor; Arati Prabhakar, Director, DARPA; Beth Sanner, Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence; Kiron Skinner, Director of Policy Planning, Department of State; Heather Wilson, Secretary, U.S. Air Force.
U.S. Congress (current and former) – Sen. Mark Kelly, Arizona (D); Sen. John McCain, Arizona (R); Rep. Seth Moulton, Massachusetts (D); Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona (I).
Universities – Sèverine Autesserre, Columbia University; Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University; Wyn Bowen, Kings College London; Erica Chenoweth, University of Denver; Christian Davenport, University of Michigan; Sir Lawrence Freedman, King’s College London; Oona A. Hathaway, Yale Law School; Annette Idler, Oxford University; Rob Johnson, Oxford University; Harold Koh, Yale Law School; Daniela Lamas, Harvard Medical School; Naz K. Modirzadeh, Harvard Law School; Ian Morris, Stanford University; Sir David Omand, Kings College London; Michael R. Osterholm, University of Minnesota; Steven Pinker, Harvard University; Michael T. Osterholm, University of Minnesota.
Civil Society – Abdalaziz Alhamza, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently; Diane Foley, President, James W. Foley Legacy Foundation; Fatima Gailani, Afghan Red Crescent Society; Sarah Holewinski, Center for Civilians in Conflict; Jonathan Horowitz, International Committee of the Red Cross; Bonnie Jenkins, Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation; Wassim Mukdad, Syrian musician and torture survivor; Amy Pope, Director General Elect, International Organization on Migration; Kori Schake, International Institute for Strategic Studies; Leslie Schweitzer, Founder and Chair, Friends of the American University of Afghanistan; Ali Soufan, CEO, The Soufan Group; Sue Mi Terry, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Nick Waters, Bellingcat; Rebecca J. Wolfe, Mercy Corps.
Media – Rania Abouzeid; Wolf Blitzer, CNN; Sheri Fink, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist; Masha Gessen, New Yorker; Eric Schmitt, New York Times; Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Washington Post; Mara Hvistendahl, The Intercept; John Micklethwait, Editor-in-chief, Bloomberg News; Adrian Wooldridge, Political Editor, The Economist; Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal.
Industry – Susie Adams, Microsoft; Dmitri Alperovitch, Founder and former CEO, CrowdStrike; Daveed Garstein-Ross, CEO, Expert Theory; Yasmin Green, Jigsaw; Nicola Johnson, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems; Gen. (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal, Chairman, McChrystal Group; LTG (Ret.) Michael K. Nagata, VP, CACI International; Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Alphabet, Inc., and former CEO of Google; Adam Sharp, Twitter; Erin Simpson, Northrop Grumman; Greg Simer, Corporate CTO, Northrop Grumman.
Foreign Governments – Jorge Castañeda Gutman, former Mexican Secretary of State; Read Adm. Takaaki Hayamizu, Defense and Naval Attaché, Embassy of Japan to the U.S.; Gen. Uchikura Hiroaki, Chief of Staff, Japan Air Self-Defense Force; Amb. Oksana Marklarova, Ambassador of the Ukraine to the U.S.; Hamdullah Mohib, Ambassador of Afghanistan to the U.S.; Juan Carlos Pinzón, Former Ambassador of Colombia to the U.S.; Roya Rahmani, Former Afghan Ambassador to the U.S.; Amb. Jose Manuel G. Romualdez, Ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines to the U.S.; Amb. James Roscoe MVO, Acting Ambassador of the U.K. to the U.S.; Hon. Kevin Rudd, Australian Ambassador to the U.S.; Amb. Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, Ambassador of Pakistan to the U.S.; Fareed Yasseen, Ambassador of Iraq to the U.S.
Past Future Security Forum programs
In the first several years (2015-2018), the conference was named the “Future of War Conference.” We rebranded the event as the Future Security Forum in 2019 to better align the event with a focus on an interdisciplinary engagement with security. Please find past conference programs below.
Future Security Forum 2024 Day 1