Aaron L. Friedberg is Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he taught from 1987 to 2026, and co-director of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs' Center for International Security Studies. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Senior Advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Friedberg is the author of The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (1988), In the Shadow of the Garrison State, America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (2000), A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (2011), Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate Over US military Strategy in Asia (2014), The Authoritarian Challenge: China, Russia and the Threat to the Liberal International Order (2017), Partial Disengagement: A New US Strategy for Economic Competition with China (2019), Getting China Wrong (2022) and The Derisking Race: China, America and the Fragmentation of the Global Economy (2026). He is also the co-editor (with Richard Ellings) of three volumes in the National Bureau of Asian Research's annual 'Strategic Asia' series. His articles and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Commentary, The National Interest, The American Interest, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, and International Security.

In 2001-2002 Friedberg was selected as the first occupant of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. He has been a research fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Harvard University's Center for International Affairs. From June 2003 to June 2005 he was Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs in the office of the Vice President. After leaving government he was appointed to the Defense Policy Board and the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion.. Between 2022 and 2026 he served two terms as a congressionally appointed member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Friedberg received his AB in 1978 and his PhD in 1986, both from Harvard University.