Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a nonresident senior fellow with New America’s Future Security Scenarios Lab and the founder and chief executive officer of ExpertTheory. Gartenstein-Ross designs and facilitates games and simulations that help participants learn new skills and ideas, examine complex problems, test strategies, and make decisions under uncertainty. His work includes games designed for Jigsaw, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Canada’s Department of National Defence, as well as leading universities (including American, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, and UNC Chapel Hill,).

Gartenstein-Ross pioneered the Immersive Exercise style of game. His approach reflects a conviction that discussing a difficult problem is not the same as having to act on it: games require participants to test their assumptions against the choices of others who see the situation differently. He also played a lead role in the creation of Providence, ExpertTheory’s software platform designed to transform the creation and management of professional games and simulations.

These projects build on more than two decades of Gartenstein-Ross’s work on national-security problems with real consequences and no obvious answers. Gartenstein-Ross worked on counterterrorism issues full time beginning in 2004 and gained international recognition, with the New York Times describing him in 2007 as “a rising star in the counterterrorism community.”

He founded the private firm Valens Global in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2024; he remains a senior advisor to the firm. He served as lead drafter of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s 2019 Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence. Other assignments have included serving as a subject-matter consultant during live hostage negotiations with an Iraqi militant group and helping major technology companies counter terrorist propaganda on their platforms. His work has also taken him into federal courtrooms as an expert witness in major terrorism trials and into training rooms with law enforcement and members of the U.S. and allied armed forces, for whom he has led more than 100 sessions.

Gartenstein-Ross is the author or editor of more than 30 nonfiction books and monographs, and his first novel, Sleeping Giants, is forthcoming in early 2027. Homeland Security Today has recognized him among its 50 trailblazers in homeland security. He is an adjunct instructor at Duke University and holds a PhD. in world politics from the Catholic University of America, a JD from New York University School of Law, and a BA from Wake Forest University.