FPRI Welcomes Dr. Jeffrey Lewis and Sam Lair as National Security Program Fellows

• September 22, 2025

Philadelphia, PA

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is pleased to welcome Dr. Jeffrey Lewis as a Distinguished Research Fellow and Sam Lair as a Fellow in the National Security Program. 

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is a Distinguished Scholar of Global Security at Middlebury College and a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), which conducts dialogues with counterparts in China, Russia, and India, and serves on the Frontier Red Team for Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company. From 2022 to 2025, Dr. Lewis was a member of the US Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. He is the author of The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China’s Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (MIT Press, 2007) and Paper Tigers: China’s Nuclear Posture (International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2014). 

Previously, Dr. Lewis served as the director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and as executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. 

Dr. Lewis received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Augustana College and a Ph.D. in Policy Studies from the University of Maryland. His full bio can be found here.

 

Sam Lair is a Research Associate on the Open-Source Intelligence Team at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, where he manages and conducts investigations into nuclear and missile programs using satellite imagery, state and social media, and archival sources. He holds a M.A. in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, and a B.A. in History and Political Science from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. His full bio can be found here.

“We have big plans for the future of our national security program, and Jeffrey and Sam are two perfect additions to the team. I cannot wait to get to work on projects ranging from the future of space security to the future of deterrence,” said FPRI President Dr. Aaron Stein.

For more information or media inquiries, please contact Leah Pedro at lpedro@fpri.org.