Dr. Gary J. Sampson is a writer and scholar who explores leadership, citizenship, and the moral weather of public life. A lifelong reader who delivered newspapers as a kid in Nebraska, he now lives in Virginia and writes to make complicated questions clear and useful.

Before turning fully toward writing, he spent more than 25 years on active duty as a U.S. Marine Corps intelligence and international affairs officer (Lieutenant Colonel, retired), including deployments to Operations Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom–Philippines.

He earned a PhD in international relations from Tufts University’s Fletcher School and was an Olmsted Foundation Scholar in Taiwan. His work has appeared in Studies in Intelligence, Military Review, the International Journal of Korean Studies, and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He occasionally writes essays that appear in his hometown newspaper, the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star.

Gary is the founder and editor of Temple of Liberty (Substack) and is developing book projects on American grand strategy, PRC–DPRK nuclear dynamics, and leadership lessons from a career at home and abroad.