François Heisbourg

About François Heisbourg

François Heisbourg is chairman of the council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is special advisor of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique. His career has included positions in government (member of the French mission to the UN, international security adviser to the Minister of Defence), industry (vice-president of Thomson-CSF, ie the present-day Thales; senior vice president strategy at Matra Défense Espace, today part of EADS) and academia (professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris, director of the IISS). He was a member of the International Commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and has sat on a number of national and international blue-ribbon bodies (notably, the French Defence and national security White Paper, the International Commission on the Balkans, the EU Commission’s group of personalities on security research and development). He has written extensively on defence and security issues and is a frequent contributor to both specialist and main-stream media on such matters. His latest book is “Espionnage et renseignement: le vrai dossier”, Odile Jacob pub., Paris, 2012.