Doron Feldman is a postdoctoral fellow in the America in the World Consortium at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his PhD at the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Prof. Azar Gat. His dissertation focused on soft power strategies of small, threatened states, with comparative case studies including Israel, Taiwan, Singapore, Estonia, and Finland. His research examined how these states leverage soft power—particularly through the development of technological ecosystems—for strategic, diplomatic, and policy objectives.

During his doctoral studies, Doron led the cybersecurity research program at the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security at Tel Aviv University, which focuses on national security and emerging technologies such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. He was also a visiting doctoral research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, where he contributed to research on regional security dynamics and technological cooperation. Subsequently, he was awarded the Taiwan Fellowship and conducted research at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, examining how Taiwan might adapt Israel’s regional cybersecurity and technology cooperation model with Gulf states under the Abraham Accords.

Doron holds a BA with honors in Political Science and Israel Studies, and an MA in Security Studies from the School of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. His MA thesis examined U.S. support for rebel groups in the Middle East, with a focus on the Obama administration’s policy during the Arab Spring in Syria and Libya, analyzed through the lens of lessons learned from the American experience in supporting the Afghan mujahideen during the 1979–1989 Soviet–Afghan war.

His research interests include small state strategies, the geopolitics of the Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions, national cyber policies, foreign policy and regional cooperation through cybersecurity and technology, and methods for countering hybrid and foreign influence threats across social media and the internet.