Addressing the North Korean Threat

Speakers (from left to right): 

Dr. Samantha Ravich, Chairman, FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation

Tom Malinowski, Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

Anthony Ruggiero, FDD’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program Chair and Senior Fellow

Dr. Jonathan Pollack, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Josh Lederman, Foreign Policy Reporter, The Associated Press

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance hosted a breakfast conversation on Thursday, August 24, from 9:15am to 10:30am: Addressing the North Korean Threat.

With tensions between Washington and Pyongyang at an all-time high, experts discussed options for countering the regime’s proliferation, China’s role in sanctions evasion, Pyongyang’s deplorable human rights record, and how North Korea’s growing cyber-enabled threats compound these issue areas.

The event featured Tom Malinowski, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Dr. Jonathan Pollack, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Dr. Samantha Ravich, senior advisor at FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance; and Anthony Ruggiero, former Treasury and State official and FDD senior fellow. Josh Lederman of The Associated Press moderated the discussion.

Addressing the North Korean Threat
A conversation with Tom Malinowski, Dr. Jonathan Pollack, Dr. Samantha Ravich, and Anthony Ruggiero
Moderated by Josh Lederman

Thursday, August 24, 2017
9:15am – 10:30am

Josh Lederman covers foreign affairs, national security and U.S. diplomacy for The Associated Press (AP), based in Washington. From 2013 to 2017, he was a White House reporter for the AP and traveled with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to more than 20 countries. In 2015, Mr. Lederman won the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Merriman Smith award for excellence in presidential news coverage under deadline pressure. He appears frequently on television and radio, including on MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and others. A multimedia journalist from Tucson, Arizona, Mr. Lederman started his journalism career in the AP’s Jerusalem bureau, and later covered Gov. Chris Christie and state politics for the AP in New Jersey. In 2011-2012, Mr. Lederman covered presidential, House and Senate campaigns for The Hill newspaper in Washington.

Tom Malinowski was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2014 to 2017, overseeing the Obama administration’s efforts to support emerging democracies, protect activists in closed societies, combat corruption, and ensure that our foreign policy reflected our values. Prior to that, Mr. Malinowski was the Washington Director for Human Rights Watch from 2001 to 2013. During the Clinton Administration, he served as Senior Director for Foreign Policy Speechwriting at the National Security Council, and as a speechwriter to Secretaries of State Albright and Christopher. He began his career as an aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.

Dr. Jonathan D. Pollack is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center and Center for East Asia Policy at the Brookings Institution. Between 2012 and 2014, he served as director of the John L. Thornton China Center. Prior to joining Brookings in 2010, he was professor of Asian and Pacific Studies and chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Dr. Pollack’s principal research interests include Chinese national security strategy; U.S.-China relations; U.S. strategy in Asia and the Pacific; Korean politics and foreign policy; Asian international politics; and nuclear weapons and international security. His latest book, “No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and International Security,” was published in 2011 by Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies; the Asan Institute of Policy Studies published a revised Korean language edition in 2012. His current research, to be published as “Endangered Order:  Revisionism and Strategic Risk in Northeast Asia,” focuses on the strategic ambitions and fears of the leaders of China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, and their consequences for the future regional order.

Dr. Samantha Ravich is a Senior Advisor at FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance (CSIF) and Principal Investigator on CSIF’s Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare project. She also serves on the CSIF Board of Advisors. Dr. Ravich advises private industry and Federal and State governments on international security, financial, and political risk. She was the Republican Co-Chair of the Congressionally-mandated National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs in the United States Intelligence Community. Dr. Ravich is now a Managing Partner of A2P, LLC, a social media analysis firm. She is also a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group and serves on the Board of Directors for DroneShield, an acoustic-based drone detection company. She was Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney and served in the White House for five and a half years where she was the Vice President’s representative on Asian and Middle East Affairs as well as on Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Proliferation. In 2000, Cambridge University Press published her book, Marketization and Democracy: East Asian Experiences, which is used as a basic textbook in international economics, political science, and Asian studies college courses.

Anthony Ruggiero is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has spent more than 17 years in the U.S. government as an expert in the use of targeted financial measures. Most recently he was a Foreign Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Marco Rubio, where he drafted Iran-related legislation and was Senator Rubio’s senior advisor on issues related to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also served in the Treasury Department as Deputy Director and then Director of the Office of Global Affairs in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. Prior to joining Treasury, he spent over 13 years in various capacities at State Department, including as Chief of the Defensive Measures and WMD Finance Team. There he developed, coordinated, and implemented policies on counter-proliferation and WMD financing related to Iran and North Korea. Mr. Ruggiero was Non-Proliferation Advisor to the U.S. delegation to the 2005 rounds of the Six-Party Talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear program, and participated in U.S.-North Korea meetings following the identification of Macau-based Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern.

This event was made possible through a grant from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.