Oriana Skylar Mastro

Oriana Skylar Mastro is an American political scientist currently serving as a Courtesy Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Center Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a strategic planner at the US Indo-Pacific Command. Her research focuses on Asia-Pacific security.

Career
Mastro holds a Bachelor of Arts (2006) in East Asian studies from Stanford University (where she studied Mandarin) and a Master of Arts (2009) and PhD (2013) in politics from Princeton University. From 2006 to 2007, Mastro was a junior fellow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's China program. In 2008, while a doctoral student at Princeton, Mastro met with then deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), Lieutenant general Dan P. Leaf, at a conference. Leaf suggested that she enlist in the U.S. military after learning about her plan to pursue a summer internship with USINDOPACOM to better research how the military dealt with issues in the Asia-Pacific. Despite initially deciding to continue with an internship instead, Mastro enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in late 2008 and later started officer training to commission as a second lieutenant.

In 2009, Mastro joined the Department of Defense as an analyst for USINDOPACOM. Subsequently, in 2010, she worked for the Project 2049 Institute as a summer associate. From 2012 to 2013, she was a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. In 2013, Mastro was appointed assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and in 2020, she was appointed a center fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

In the meantime, Mastro has also continued her military service in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. She was named the Air Force's Individual Reservist Company Grade Officer of the Year in both 2016 and 2022.

Publications

 * Upstart: How China Became A Great Power, Oxford University Press, May 23, 2024
 * The Military Challenge of the People's Republic of China, in Defense Budgeting for a Safer World: The Experts Speak, Hoover Institution, November 1, 2023
 * Project Atom 2023: A Competitive Strategies Approach for U.S. Nuclear Posture through 2035, Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 30, 2023 (co-authored with Heather Williams, Kelsey Hartigan, Lachlan MacKenzie, Robert Soofer, Tom Karako, Franklin Miller, Leonor Tomero, and Jon Wolfsthal)
 * Deepening US-Taiwan Cooperation Through Semiconductors, in Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semiconductor Security, Hoover Institution, July 18, 2023 (co-authored with Kharis Templeman)
 * The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, Cornell University Press, Security Affairs Series, 2019

Personal life
Mastro is married to Arzan Tarapore, a research scholar at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.