Mick Ryan is a Senior Fellow for Military Studies in the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program.

Mick spent 35 years in the Australian Army and had the honour of commanding soldiers at multiple levels. His operational service includes deployments to East Timor, Iraq, and southern Afghanistan, and he also served as a strategist on the United States Joint Staff in the Pentagon.

Mick has a bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies from the University of New England and is a graduate of the Australian Defence Force School of Languages. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and a graduate of the USMC School of Advanced Warfighting. In 2012, he graduated with distinction from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.

Mick has a long-standing interest in military history and strategy, advanced technologies, organisational innovation, and adaptation theory. He was inaugural President of the Defence Entrepreneurs Forum (Australia) and is a member of the Military Writers Guild. He is a keen author on the interface of military strategy, innovation, and advanced technologies, as well as how institutions can develop their intellectual edge. He has contributed to several books, including Strategy Strikes Back (2018), Why We Write (2019), On Strategy (2020), and To Boldly Go (2021). Mick has also authored major reports that include the Ryan Review (2016) and Thinking About Strategic Thinking (2021).

On 27 February 2022, Mick retired from the Australian Army. In the same month, his book War Transformed was published by USNI Books. He is a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC Australia, and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He is also a strategy consultant to a number of defence and security companies.

His latest book is White Sun War, published in May 2023. It is a fictional account of a war over Taiwan.