Isaac Stone Fish

CEO · Strategy Risks

Isaac Stone Fish is the founder and CEO of Strategy Risks. He is also a Washington Post Global Opinions contributing columnist, a contributor to CBSN, an adjunct at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council, a columnist on China risk at Barron’s, and a frequent speaker at events around the United States and the world. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Magazine’s Asia Editor: he managed coverage of the region, and wrote about the politics, economics, and international affairs of China, Japan, and North Korea. A fluent Mandarin speaker and formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China prior to joining Foreign Policy. He has traveled widely in the region and in the country, visiting every Chinese province, autonomous region, and municipality. He was also formerly a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a senior fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.

His views on international affairs have been widely quoted, including in MSNBC, ABC, NPR, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, The Guardian, the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald, Talking Points Memo, and Al-Jazeera, among others; and in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese media. An experienced public speaker, Stone Fish has given talks at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, the University of Washington in Seattle, University of Groningen in Holland, Fudan University (in Mandarin), among other universities; and at conferences, think tanks, and events around the world.

Stone Fish’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Slate, The New Republic, Politico Magazine, The Daily Beast, Time, and the Los Angeles Times. While in Beijing, he served on the board of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China, and, when the sky wasn’t the color of glue, was an avid runner.

Stone Fish is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied Chinese literature. He is also a Truman National Security Project fellow, an alum of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a senior advisor to the Korea Society. His book, America Second: How America’s Elites Are Making China Stronger, details the deep web of Beijing’s influence in America — and how to push back without being McCarthyist or racist (Knopf, February 2022).