Dr. Kenton Thibaut
Kenton Thibaut is senior resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), where she leads China programming for the Democracy + Tech Initiative; she is also a Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Center’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative.
In this capacity, she serves as head of China research and as principal investigator for projects examining China’s role in the global technology ecosystem and the PRC’s policy priorities in the digital domain. Her work focuses in particular on state approaches to data governance, including data controls, data localization, and cross-border data restrictions, and how these frameworks shape information control, technology diplomacy, and the development, deployment, and governance of artificial intelligence. Her research is explicitly comparative, situating China’s data and technology policies alongside those of the United States and the European Union to assess their implications for strategic competition, global standards-setting, and the international digital order.
Prior to joining DFRLab, Thibaut spent five years in the private sector advising multinational firms on Chinese government relations and regulatory risk, with sectoral experience spanning aerospace, health, technology, and consumer goods, among others. She previously conducted research at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, where her work focused on Chinese elite politics and decision-making dynamics.
Thibaut received her PhD in Political Science from Georgetown University, where her doctoral research examined the social and political drivers of regulatory fragmentation in cross-border data governance regimes. She has held multiple competitive research fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship, Blakemore Freeman Fellowship, and Boren National Security Fellowship. She is a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project and a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.
She holds an MA in International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and completed graduate studies in Nanjing, China. She lived for over five years in Mainland China and Taiwan and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.
