llya Ponomarev is a Russian politician, tech entrepreneur, and investor. A member of the Russian Parliament from 2007–2016, he chaired the Innovations and Venture Capital subcommittee, and became a leader of the Russian protest movement in 2011. Forced into exile by Putin in 2016, he moved to Silicon Valley and then Kyiv, where he established an investment company that, as the first Ukrainian company traded in the US, went public on NASDAQ in 2018. He’s a regular speaker at US-based think tanks like Atlantic Council, CSIS, and Heritage Foundation; at universities like Yale, Stanford, and MIT; and he’s interviewed frequently by leading US and European media.

Gregg Stebben is the author of 20 books, including White House: Confidential and Internet Privacy for Dummies. In his career as a journalist for media brands ranging from Forbes to Esquire to Men’s Health, he has interviewed hundreds of newsmakers and politicians including US Presidents Trump, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. He is a frequent guest on radio, and a veteran of over 15,000 interviews on local US radio stations and syndicated shows. In March 2022, he went to Poland and Ukraine to report live on the Russian invasion.