Geoffrey Cain
Award-winning foreign correspondent
Author of The Perfect Police State and Samsung Rising
Watch Geoffrey Cain interview Volodymyr Zelensky on War, Technology,
and the Future of Ukraine, via WIRED here.
Geoffrey Cain, technologist and author, is Senior Fellow for Critical Emerging Technologies at Lincoln Policy Network. He regularly advises, consults and speaks for corporations, venture capital and private equity firms, and political leaders on the ways that America can rebuild and on large-scale technological changes, rivalries, and struggles underway worldwide. A longtime foreign correspondent, Cain’s most recent book, The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future, was called “a prescient, alarming work on the overreach of technology and state power” in a Kirkus starred review. His first book, Samsung Rising, was longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. In 2022, Geoffrey began to serve on the advisory council of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University.
A former correspondent at The Economist, and senior correspondent at GlobalPost, Cain has been a regular commentator in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Financial Times, and Foreign Policy, a contributing editor at The Mekong Review, and a regular guest on CNN, MSNBC, BBC and Bloomberg. His work takes him to the world’s most authoritarian and far-off places, from inside North Korea to the trans-Siberian railway across Russia, from investigations into genocide in Cambodia to experiments in technological surveillance in China. He has testified before Congress on his expertise.
He was a senior advisor to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, investigating malign actors who deployed technology and illicit financial tools to undermine American businesses. A Fulbright scholar, he holds a master’s with distinction from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s at The George Washington University. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2022, Geoff became a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute (NSI) at George Mason University.
Speech topics
Where the world is headed
As a foreign correspondent and geopolitical expert, Geoffrey Cain has lived all over the world, interviewing world leaders including Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, exploring the remote, improbable, dangerous and authoritarian—and, for his investigative work, has been subject to a police investigation for spying and detained many times.
He’s found that emerging authoritarian nations like China and Russia, with growing power, will shape the future for American business and political leaders.
First, the world of the future will be determined by who controls the software space—AI, facial recognition, biotech, while the era of hardware is fading. Second, business victories will also go to the leaders who can tap into creative and narrative-driven fields, since AI will automate reasoning-heavy fields. Finally, as future epidemics and geopolitical conflict takes hold, most successful businesses will pull back from China. They’ll bring manufacturing home due to falling logistical costs and AI advancements.
Time to Build
For decades, America has struggled with steep divisions, poverty, and hollowed out communities. Now it’s time to build. After more than a decade covering the rise of hostile foreign powers bent on keeping America down, and traveling across gutted communities throughout the heartland, author and technologist Geoffrey Cain shows that building will be essential for America to survive and thrive — that means local communities, their workforces, jobs, and a common prosperity. Taking us on a journey around the world, Cain shows how great leaders and companies have pulled themselves out of trouble before, and how doing this at home will not be as hard as we think.
America’s Technological Renewal
America is in the early throes of a little-seen and little-known technological revival. Not the kind happening in Silicon Valley, where software, apps, and venture capitalists reign supreme. Different than the incredible success of Silicon Valley, this industrial renaissance is spread out across the country, where unprecedented advances in robotics, space technologies, and advanced manufacturing are firing up growth in states and regions clustered around Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia. Author and technologist Geoffrey Cain brings us into these resurgent communities and shows why American industry, far from dead, will be the future of tech.
Books
The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future
An in-depth, on-the ground view of how Chinese officials have co-opted technology, infrastructure and the minds of their people to establish the definitive police state.
Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
An explosive exposé of one of the biggest and most secretive companies in the world, Samsung, as the Korean juggernaut battles Apple and Sony to dominate the world of technology