Eugene Gholz is an adjunct scholar for the Cato Institute’s Defense and Foreign Policy Department and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Gholz works primarily at the intersection of national security and economic policy. From 2010-2012, he served in the Pentagon as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, where he led initiatives to better understand the complex defense supply chain and to apply that understanding in the budget process. He also focused on policy regarding reimbursement of industry’s Independent Research and Development (IR&D) expenditures.

Dr. Gholz works on innovation, defense management, and U.S. foreign policy. He is the coauthor of two books: Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry, and U.S. Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy. His recent scholarship focuses on energy security. He previously taught at the University of Texas’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, Williams College, and the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. He is also a research affiliate of MIT’s Security Studies Program, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and will chair the international security studies section of the International Studies Association from 2019-2021. His PhD is from MIT.