Thomas G. Mahnken currently serves as the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. He previously served as a Professor of Strategy at the US Naval War College and a Visiting Fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is author of Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (2002). He is co-editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies.
Joseph A. Maiolo is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Department of War Studies, Kings College London. In 2005-06 he was Visiting Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies. He is author of The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933-39(1998) and co-editor (with Robert Boyce) of The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (2005). He is co-editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies.