Gary Shiffman
Keynote Speaker Profile
Gary Shiffman delivers the most important talk your audience will hear: how artificial intelligence is changing violence, power, and human behavior—and what we can do about it. His keynotes are engaging, data-driven, and immediately actionable, combining decades of national security experience, economic research, and AI innovation to help audiences see the systems shaping our world with new clarity.
Watch Gary's Previous Talks
About Gary as a Speaker
Gary Shiffman is a behavioral economist, national security expert, and applied AI researcher who has taught, led, and spoken on five continents. His background—from military service and U.S. Senate work to DARPA-backed AI research and corporate leadership—gives him a rare ability to connect the abstract with the operational.
As a professor at Clemson University and former faculty member at Georgetown University, Gary brings the heart of a teacher to every stage. His audiences range from Fortune 500 executives to policymakers and defense leaders seeking actionable frameworks for navigating complexity.
Gary’s speaking style is narrative and conversational—philosophical but grounded in real-world experience. His talks invite inquiry over instruction, helping audiences think critically, speak confidently, and see patterns that were once invisible.
Sample Keynote Topics
From Warfare to Corporate Strategy: The Economics of Competition
What if terrorism, insurgency, and corporate disruption all follow the same logic? Gary reveals how the same market forces that drive armed conflict also shape business competition. Whether analyzing Middle East conflicts or Silicon Valley disruptions, this framework helps leaders understand any competitive environment.
You'll leave with a universal model for decoding competition — whether facing geopolitical rivals or market disruptors.
AI, Power, and the Future of Coercion
What happens when machines learn not just to reason, but to manipulate, threaten, and dominate? Gary explores how AI — trained on human behavior — will inherit not just our brilliance but our darker instincts. This talk examines the programmable future of power, coercion, and control in business, politics, and society.
You'll walk away with a new lens for understanding AI's role in everything from corporate strategy to persuasion engines.
Why Organizations Fail — and How They Can Adapt in the Age of AI
Organizations don't collapse because of bad people — they collapse when incentives drift from mission and truth. Gary reveals how AI and complexity accelerate this drift — and how understanding behavioral systems can help leaders redesign their organizations for long-term success.
You'll gain tools to diagnose organizational decay — and redesign for resilience in any sector.
What Professionals Say About Gary
"[Shiffman emphasizes] the argument that a lot of what we're calling terrorists, or insurgents, or criminals are providing something else that is masked by the things that are costly to us as the non-participants of the terror, the death, the activities. And that the opportunity to affiliate with these groups gives participants a way to truck, barter, and exchange more effectively because you can trust their insiders… I thought that was the most provocative idea in the book."
Russ Roberts, EconTalk host.
Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution
“Gary Shiffman has always been a clarion voice in understanding the importance of behavioral science and economics in national security -- never more so than in this work. In this book, Shiffman has provided a seminal study of how economic dynamics and individual decisions affect the manifestations of violence and the evolution of terrorist, militant, and criminal movements in a changing global landscape. By using an economic lens, he breaks down the orthodoxy between traditional disciplines and rigid categories of identity to understand sources of violence and how non-state actors emerge, adapt, and compete. By examining the cases of Pablo Escobar, Joseph Kony, and Osama bin Laden in this way, he is able to explain how each have acted as “entrepreneurs” using force and forms of coercion to capture markets, each in his own way. This should become required reading for those seeking to understand how individual decisions drive sub-state groups and violence and how we might use these insights to counter this violence and fight like entrepreneurs.”
Juan Zarate, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combatting Terrorism (2005-2009)
"Gary M. Shiffman uses the science of Economics as a tool for understanding violent human behavior, and he shows us how better to understand those who would harm us. Gary brings provocative, innovative, and exciting ideas to those seeking knowledge, clarity and peace of mind in the promotion of freedom and security. The Economics of Violence is an exciting new book from an established and important voice in national security."
Senator Connie Mack
