Chung Min Lee is Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. and Chairman of the International Advisory Council at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.

Lee’s main research interest lies in East Asian defense, the impact of advanced technologies including AI on emerging warfare, intelligence estimates, and sources of Asian power.

Lee has published widely and is the author of Fault Lines in a Rising Asia (Carnegie, 2016) and The Hermit King: The Dangerous Game of Kim Jong Un (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) with a Japanese edition entitled that was released in April 2021. His forthcoming book on resetting South Korean defense will be published by IISS/Routledge in fall 2024 as part of its Adelphi series. Lee is currently researching the impact of AI on Asian security and defense and how power is going to shift radically in an emerging AI ecosystem. He is planning to write his next book on East Asia’s key leaders who engineered Asia’s rise in the 1960s and 1970s.

Academic Background

- Ph.D. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
- M.A. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
- B.A. political science, Yonsei University

Professional Background

- Professor, Institute of Security Convergence at the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology
- ROK’s Ambassador for National Security Affairs
- Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University
- Policy analyst, RAND Corporation