Francesca Ghiretti is the director of the RAND Europe Economic Security and Strategy Initiative (REESSI) and a research leader at RAND Europe. Working primarily in Defence and Security, she leads research on China and on economic security. She is an expert on China’s foreign policy and Europe–China relations, and an adjunct fellow (Non-Resident) at the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She is also the host of podcast Geoeconomic Competition. Previously, she served as senior geoeconomics fellow at a London-based AI company and as an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), Europe’s largest think tank on China. Earlier in her career, she worked as a research fellow on Asia at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), where she led a project on the Belt and Road Initiative, as a geopolitical analyst for a London-based hedge fund, and as an assistant to former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. She is the author of Chinese Investments and the Economic Security Turn in Europe: Where Economy and Security Meet (Bristol University Press, January 2025). Her commentary and analysis have appeared in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Politico. Ghiretti received her Ph.D. from the Centre for Grand Strategy in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her thesis, The securitization of Chinese foreign direct investments in the EU, examining how economic instruments become security concerns, received the Outstanding Thesis Award.