Michael Cole is a Taipei-based security analyst with more than two decades of experience in national security, intelligence, and democracy promotion. His areas of specialization include Taiwanese politics, cross-Strait relations, the People’s Liberation Army, political warfare, democratic resilience, intelligence and counterterrorism.
He is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) in Washington, D.C., the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) in Ottawa, Canada and the Taiwan Research Hub at the University of Nottingham in the UK. He is also and a Research Fellow with the Prospect Foundation in Taipei, Taiwan. He is a geopolitical consultant for the private sectors and governments. Much of his work in recent years has taken place at the intersection of government, the private sector and academia, with involvement in several Track 1.5 and other closed-door government initiatives.
He is a former Senior Advisor on Countering Foreign Authoritarian Influence (CFAI) with the U.S.-baed International Republican Institute (IRI). Before moving to Taiwan in 2005, he was an intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Ottawa, Canada. He was deputy news editor at the Taipei Times from 2010-2013, chief editor of Thinking Taiwan between 2013-2016, chief editor of The News Lens International in 2016, and chief editor of Taiwan Sentinel from 2017-2020. He was also editor at large of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy’s Democracy Bulletin from 2017-2019.
He is the author of several books, including Convergence or Conflict in the Taiwan Strait: The Illusion of Peace? (Routledge), Cross-Strait Relations Since 2016: The End of the Illusion (Routledge), Insidious Power: How China Undermines Global Democracy (Eastbridge, co-edited with Dr. Hsu Szuchien), and more recently The Taiwan Tinderbox: The Island-Nation at the Center of the New Cold War (Polity).
Cole has published more than 1,000 articles in journals and international media, among them Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Janes’ Defense Weekly, Janes’ Intelligence Review, the IISS Military Balance, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Christian Science Monitor, Nikkei Asia, South China Morning Post, Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Hill Times, Huffington Post, Lowy Interpreter, the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief, the Brookings Institution’s Taiwan-US Quarterly, and many others. He is a regular commentator on the BBC, ABC, CBC, CBS, al Jazeera and several other global news outlets.
He holds a Master’s Degree in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC). He has an International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance (IDHA) from the International Center from the Center for International Health and Cooperation/Fordham University and the CX-77 diploma in peacekeeping from the Lester B. Pearson International Peacekeeping Centre.