David Kilcullen
David Kilcullen
Chief Executive of Global Research, Cordillera Applications Group
Dr. David Kilcullen is a thought leader, entrepreneur and globally recognized innovator in the fields of strategy, technology and defense research. As Chief Executive of the global research firm Cordillera Applications Group, he leads two companies in the United States and United Kingdom, with a permanent presence in Australia and Singapore, and projects in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Cordillera specializes in defense technology innovation. Clients include NATO, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the UK Space Agency, U.S. Space Force, U.S. and allied special operations forces, World Bank, leading manufacturing firms and financial institutions, and founders and innovators in the deep-tech defense and aerospace ecosystem.
He serves on several corporate and non-profit advisory boards in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Before starting Cordillera, he founded, led and successfully sold three previous companies, including two boot-strapped defense innovation consulting firms, a tech platform for crowd-sourced intelligence data, and a venture-backed aerospace and defense leasing company.
In addition to his corporate roles, Dr. Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, where he teaches strategy and special operations, and where he heads the Future Operations Research Group. He is also Professor of Practice in Global Security at Arizona State University, where he teaches technological innovation. He is a well-known theorist and practitioner of guerrilla and unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, with operational experience over a 25-year career with the Australian and U.S. governments as an infantry officer, intelligence analyst, policy adviser and diplomat.
After a successful 20-year military career as an Australian Army light infantry officer, he joined the Office of National Intelligence, Australia’s national intelligence agency, as senior counterterrorism officer for Southeast Asia, before being seconded to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism as chief strategist in 2006-2009. He served in the Iraq War in 2006-2007, where he was personal adviser to U.S. General David Petraeus, and was awarded two U.S. military decorations in addition to his Australian awards. He subsequently served as counterinsurgency advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and deployed in counterterrorism roles to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Colombia.
David completed his PhD in the political anthropology of guerrilla warfare in 2001 and is the bestselling author of eight prize-winning books and numerous scholarly papers on terrorism, insurgency, unconventional and irregular warfare, urbanisation and future warfare. He was awarded the 1995 Weary Dunlop award for his PhD fieldwork in Indonesia, and the 2015 Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for his war reporting on the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He writes regularly for The Australian, Australia’s national daily newspaper, as the paper’s senior military correspondent.
In December 2021, he was honoured by the U.S. Congress for his role in the evacuation of more than 2,300 Afghan civilians and special forces personnel during the fall of Kabul in August 2021.