Alliance for Securing Democracy

Joseph Bodnar is a research analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. He is part of ASD’s information manipulation team and focuses on Russian propaganda and disinformation. 

Prior to joining ASD, Bodnar worked with the Atlantic Council’s Global Strategy Initiative. He holds a master's degree in international affairs from American University and a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in political science from Kennesaw State University. His capstone project at American involved working with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to identify trends in foreign disinformation targeting the 2020 US presidential election. Bodnar’s writings have been published in the National Interest, Inkstick, and the Dallas Morning News, among other media outlets, and his research has been cited in The Economist, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg.  

Etienne Soula is a Brussels-based research analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. His research focuses on Chinese information manipulation, economic coercion, and use of technology exports to weaken democracies and to disseminate globally its model of techno-authoritarianism. He maintains ASD’s authoritarian interference tracker that covers more than 600 incidents of Russian and Chinese political and economic interference in Europe and North America. He also monitors and reports on Chinese diplomatic and state-media messaging. 

Soula previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Hudson Institute, and NATO. He holds a dual master’s degree in international affairs from American University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and a law degree from the University of Nottingham.

David Salvo is 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. 

Prior to joining GMF, Salvo was a foreign service officer in the US Department of State, serving most recently as the deputy secretary of state’s policy advisor for Europe, Eurasia, and international security issues. He also advised senior-level State Department negotiators on the protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus, worked on US policy toward NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and served overseas in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He speaks Russian and Serbo-Croatian and has a basic knowledge of French. 

David received his master’s degree from Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and a bachelor’s degree in government and Russian from Georgetown. He is an avid music lover and plays in several DC-area bands, including a tribute to the renowned rock band Phish.