Shashank Joshi

Shashank Joshi is Defence Editor at The Economist, where he writes on a wide range of national security, defence and intelligence issues. He has led world-class coverage of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, geopolitical tensions in Asia and global issues like nuclear weapons, space security and cyber threats. Joshi is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies King’s College London. He has published two books on Iran’s nuclear programme and India’s growing military capabilities. He appears frequently on radio, podcasts and television and as a moderator at high-profile events.

Prior to joining The Economist in 2018, Joshi served as Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), where he now holds a place on the advisory board. Formerly, he was a Research Associate at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Programme (CCW), a centre which studies how armed conflicts are evolving. Before starting at The Economist, he spent a year as a Senior Policy Fellow for International Affairs at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Shashank Joshi holds degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, where he served as a Kennedy Scholar from Britain to the United States. He has also participated in the summer workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS) at Cornell University, which teaches academics how to understand and analyse military issues.

In addition to his academic positions, Joshi has given lectures to the UK Defence Academy, the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and NATO. He has also been invited to give expert evidence to the  House of Commons’ committees on foreign affairs and defence. He has an extensive record of publication in peer-reviewed journals, newspapers and magazines including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Guardian and of course the Economist.

In his time at The Economist, Shashank Joshi has written widely on issues ranging from the changing nature of warfare, the laws of armed conflict, the growing threat from ransomware, military modernisation in India, the state of Russian intelligence, the proliferation of advanced missiles throughout the Middle East, the future of the tank and the defence of Taiwan.

Joshi’s weekly newsletter, the War Room, reaches more than 70,000 Economist subscribers every week. He has hosted The Intelligence, the magazine’s flagship podcast, and interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, Boris Johnson, Britain’s former prime minister, and Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, among dozens of other senior officials. His recent cover stories for The Economist have covered the war in Ukraine, the impact of technology on the future of war and the revival of sea power and maritime security.