S. Mahmud Ali was trained at the Pakistan Military Academy and educated at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI), London, and King’s College London, where he earned graduate and doctoral qualifications in geopolitical and strategic studies. After a two-decade career at the British Broadcasting Corporation, London, he was associated with the LSE IDEAS and has been associated with the ICS, UM, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, since 2017. Ali is the author of eight volumes on the evolution of Sino-US relations.