Harlan Ullman is a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) International Security Program and a Vice President of the CNA Corporation. He is also a columnist for the Washington Times and a frequent commentator in U.S. and international media.

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Ullman completed over 150 combat missions and patrols in Vietnam and later commanded a destroyer in the Persian Gulf. With a Ph.D. in international affairs, finance, and economics, he has been an academic, businessman, and adviser to the most senior levels of government and the private sector. His expertise spans national security, foreign policy, defense, economics, and finance and the major regions of the world. He is also principal author of the doctrine of "shock and awe," since adopted by the Pentagon.

After leaving military service, he joined CSIS as senior fellow and director of the Political-Military and Strategy Programs and began consulting with a number of Fortune 100 companies. Elected to the board of the Wall Street Fund, he later formed his own company, the Killoween Group, a consulting firm with broad financial interests. Ullman has served on the boards of several related investment and venture capital companies with holdings in Asia and as senior partner and vice chairman of two companies in the high-technology area. He is currently chairman of the advisory board of a three-dimensional radar and electromagnetic inductive imaging company. He is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and a senior fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses

In a recent book, Unfinished Business: Afghanistan, the Middle East and Beyond (Kensington, 2002) predicted the unfolding of events from Iraq to North Korea.  His most recent book is Finishing Business: Ten Steps to Defeat Global Terror, (2004) in which he warns that the United States is mistakenly fighting a war it does not understand, waging it with flawed objectives in the wrong places, against the wrong people, and with the wrong tools. Ullman argues that unless the causes of terror are rectified or neutralized, waging a war against it will fare no better than wars on drugs, poverty, crime, and other social ills.