Yates worked for the
National Security Agency under the
United States Department of Defense; he served as a liaison officer to the Department of Commerce. He was a senior policy analyst at
The Heritage Foundation from 1996 to 2001, and served as
deputy national security advisor to the Vice President to
Dick Cheney from 2001 to 2005. for Barbour Griffith & Rogers, whose clients included Taiwan, the Indonesian National Shipowners' Association, Moneygram International, Lebanon's National Dialogue Party, and the Republic of India British Nuclear Fuels, Plc. (via a contract with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan). Yates is the founder and
CEO at DC International Advisory since 2006, a consulting firm advises on managing international political risk and business opportunity. He is also a professor of the practice with the International Business Program at
Boise State University. Currently, he is a distinguished Fellow at the Hamilton Foundation. Yates served as a senior fellow and chair of the China Policy Initiative at the
America First Policy Institute from 2022 to 2024 before returning to the Heritage Foundation as a senior research fellow.
Political career Yates advised the
2000 Bush-Cheney campaign's Asia team. He served in the
2008 Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign as a senior Asia adviser. He served in the
2012 Newt Gingrich presidential campaign as a part of the National Security Advisory team and director. He briefly ran for
Idaho Republican Party national committeeman at the July 2020 convention.
Idaho Republican Party chair Yates was elected chairman of the
Idaho Republican Party in August 2014 and was re elected in 2016; he stepped down on April 24, 2017, to pursue the
2018 Idaho lieutenant gubernatorial primary election. Days before the election, a
flyer attacking Yates was mailed to Idaho voters, claiming hidden foreign influence and
conflating support from democratic Taiwan with that from communist China. The flyer mailing was sourced to a
PAC funded by three political opponents from Yates' past.
Radio Free Asia In December 2020, Yates was appointed by
Michael Pack as the president of
Radio Free Asia, a government–funded, nonprofit international broadcasting corporation. == Personal life ==