Samantha Olson

Samantha Olson is a former Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Intern for the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security.

In 2023, she graduated from the University of Victoria with a B.A. in History Honors, where her research focused on historical expressions of paramilitary violence in Germany. Samantha's undergraduate thesis on the evolution of the Brownshirts in Nazi Germany won the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award and the Grotius Award for best undergraduate thesis. She has published on religious literacy training in American counterinsurgency doctrine and presented this research as a panelist at the Middle East and Islamic Consortium of British Columbia. Her article on the roles, duties, and recollections of Chief Petty Officers in the Royal Canadian Navy through oral history is forthcoming in the Canadian Military Journal in Spring 2024. She has also worked as a research assistant and as a sessional instructor on topics relating to extremism and radicalization.

Samantha is currently an M.A. Candidate in Security Studies at Georgetown University, pursuing a concentration in Terrorism and Substate Violence. Her primary research interests are armed forces radicalization, paramilitary violence, and leaderless resistance doctrine.