J. Michael Cole holds a Master’s Degree in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. He is a Taipei-based senior fellow with the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute (CPI), an associate researcher at the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Taipei, and chief editor of the Taiwan Sentinel. He is a former intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and a former deputy news editor at the Taipei Times. He is a regular columnist for The Diplomat and The National Interest. His areas of focus are the Taiwan Strait, the People’s Liberation Army, civil society and democratic institutions in Taiwan and the geopolitics of Northeast Asia.