Alliance for Securing Democracy

David Salvo is senior fellow and managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. An expert in Russian affairs, Salvo has been analyzing the Kremlin’s authoritarian toolkit to undermine democracy at home and abroad throughout his career.  

Salvo has worked at ASD since 2017, first as a resident fellow and then as deputy director. He is the principal author of The ASD Policy Blueprint for Countering Authoritarian Interference in Democracies and makes regular media appearances, including on NPR, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and ABC News, to discuss US-Russian relations, Russian foreign policy toward its near abroad, and Russian tactics and objectives to undermine democracy in the United States and Europe. 

Bret Schafer is a senior fellow, Media and Digital Disinformation, for the Alliance for Securing Democracy. Bret is the creator and manager of Hamilton 2.0, an online open-source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats, and government officials. As an expert in computational propaganda, state-backed information operations, and tech regulation, he has spoken at conferences around the globe and advised numerous governments and international organizations. His research has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and he has been interviewed on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC. Prior to joining GMF, he spent more than ten years in the television and film industry, including stints at Cartoon Network and as a freelance writer for Warner Brothers. He also worked in Budapest as a radio host and in Berlin as a semi-professional baseball player in Germany’s Bundesliga. He has a BS in communications with a major in radio/television/film from Northwestern University, and a master’s in public diplomacy from the University of Southern California, where he was the editor-in-chief of Public Diplomacy Magazine.

Josh Rudolph is a senior fellow and the head of GMF’s Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG), a bipartisan coalition of former senior government officials, lawmakers, and civil society leaders who strive to educate the public and policymakers about foreign and domestic autocratic threats to democracy. He is an expert on Ukrainian governance reforms, and he is pioneering GMF’s work on homegrown autocratic threats in the United States. Before leading TDWG, he was the senior fellow for malign finance and corruption at GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Rudolph regularly gives private briefings and public testimonies to governmental bodies, including the US Congress and the European Parliament. He frequently appears in the media and has published work in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Fletcher Security Review, The American Interest, Dallas Morning News, Just Security, and The Hill.

Before joining GMF, Rudolph served in a range of US government positions dealing with finance and national security. As an adviser to the US executive director at the International Monetary Fund, he formulated and represented official US positions toward matters before the organization’s executive board. As a member of the White House National Security Council, he chaired interagency diplomatic and technical work on Russia sanctions and coordinated other economic initiatives. He also served as deputy director of the markets room at the US Treasury Department.

In 2022, Rudolph took extended leave from GMF to serve as the senior fellow on USAID’s Anti-Corruption Task Force, where he was the lead author of the Dekleptification Guide. He also revamped USAID’s strategy for corruption sanctions and tracked oligarch yachts after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Before his public service, Rudolph worked for seven years at J.P. Morgan as an investment banker and financial markets research strategist. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Babson College and a master’s degree in public policy with a concentration in international trade and finance from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.