Daisuke Kawai

Daisuke Kawai is an adjunct senior fellow with the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). His areas of expertise include Indo-Pacific security and economic security, with a special interest in critical and emerging technologies (CETs).

Kawai is a project assistant professor and the director of the Economic Security & Policy Innovation Program at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology of the University of Tokyo.

His work has contributed to the development of Japan’s Economic Security Promotion Act, commissioned by the Japanese government and the Council for Science, Technology, and Innovation within the Cabinet Office of Japan. Currently, he leads CET cooperation within the Quad. In a related capacity, he serves as the senior advisor for Quad strategic planning to the Quad Investors Network.

Kawai also holds several senior appointments in Japan and the United States. In Japan, he serves as senior researcher at Keio University’s SFC Institute, special advisor to Suntory Holdings Limited, and special advisor to the chairman at the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai) in Tokyo. In the United States, he is a senior fellow at the Center for International Private Enterprise of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research in Washington, D.C.

Previously, he was a research fellow for Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) and a research fellow at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. Additionally, he served as the secretariat of the Council of Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific in Japan and worked at the Royal United Services Institute in the United Kingdom.

Kawai won the JIIA’s 60th Anniversary Essay Contest award with his essay, titled “Building a Free and Rules-Based International Order.” In 2024, he was nominated as a David Rockefeller Fellow (DRF) of the Trilateral Commission, and serves the Asia-Pacific representative of DRF.

He provides strategic counsel to top-tier leadership across Japan’s government, bureaucracy, and corporate sectors, influencing critical decisions related to key geopolitical and economic security issues.