John Shulli

John Shulli began serving in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1997. He earned a high school diploma from Dickinson High School, a bachelor's degree from Embry Riddle University in 1997, a graduate degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2009, and a graduate degree from the U.S. Army War College in 2021. His career experience includes working as a military officer.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

A native of Delaware, Colonel John Shulli has dedicated over 28 years to defending American interests abroad and leading soldiers at home. Commissioned in 1997, his career has spanned the globe—from the tank ranges of South Korea to high-level diplomatic talks in Geneva—culminating in his current role shaping the future of national defense as a Faculty Instructor at the U.S. Army War College.

John began his service as a Tank Platoon Leader and Executive Officer in South Korea. Following 9/11, he answered the call to duty, deploying to Germany and later serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a battle staff planner. His operational experience is matched by his strategic acumen; during a pivotal joint assignment at the U.S. European Command, he served as a Country Desk Officer for the UK, Ireland, Greece, and Malta. His expertise in the region led to his role as Chief of Operations for the Russia Strategy Initiative (RSI), where he supported efforts including the 2016 U.S.-Russia Syrian Cessation of Hostilities talks in Geneva. John’s career is defined by his ability to bridge military command with complex civilian policy. He commanded the 2-349th Battalion, and later the 649th Brigade in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In his civilian capacity, John established himself as a leader in defense technology and policy. He retired from Federal Civil Service in Sept 2025, having served at the Pentgon's AI office as Policy Analyst.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

Protect our sovereignty and security by finish Making America Great Again and launching an American Renaissance to dominate artificial intelligence to bring about unparalleled prosperity and discovery and a rebirth of American pride and identity... and I want Delaware, the First State, to lead itBuild an economy worthy of a superpower and power it with cheap reliable energy and sound money. Do this by building Renaissance Engines - composed of small modular nuclear reactors, powering world-class AI research centers, supported by Delaware’s unmatched corporate law and guided by our great universities. These engines will create tens of thousands of great-paying Delaware jobs, delivering breakthroughs in energy, medicine, and materials, and turn our state into the knowledge factory of the 21st century.Educate our youth to master the arts and understand the physics of the universe, to ensure they command the machines—not the other way around. The old industrial model of schools, training kids to memorize facts that machines now do better, is a recipe for obsolescence. It’s like training kids to beat a calculator. Instead, we return to a classical foundation—grammar, logic, rhetoric, great books, and deep study of the physical world—so our kids learn how to ask the big questions AI can’t answer.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

As a candidate for U.S. Senate in the great state of Delaware, I'm deeply passionate about policies that ignite a new American Renaissance: securing our borders and sovereignty to protect our communities, unleashing abundant energy through nuclear innovation and a Strategic Bitcoin Stockpile to power high-paying jobs, and reforming education to emphasize classical reasoning and STEM mastery so our kids can lead in the AI era. These aren't just policies—they're the blueprint to make the First State great again and restore the American Dream for all.

Campaign websiteShulli's campaign website stated the following:It’s time for a New Day for Delaware, where we build for the future while protecting our heritage and land. Put Delaware on the map, make us energy independent, and turn our State into the jobs factory of the 21st century.To achieve this, we must protect our nation’s liberty and independence, build an economy worthy of a superpower and power it with cheap, reliable energy, and educate our youth to master the arts and understand the physics of the universe.● Protect our sovereignty and safety by maintaining law & order, securing our border, and defending liberty for all Americans. Use tariffs to bring jobs back to Delaware.● Build the infrastructure and manufacturing base worthy of a superpower. Power it with cheap, reliable energy, and fix the monetary system broken by Wall Street greed. Get Delaware self-sufficient again in power production.● Educate the next generation to focus on the sciences, engineering, physics, and tradecraft in order to win the AI war and to explore the stars. Fund the structural redesign of Delaware’s schools for the 21st century.The time is now to live the Delaware motto of “Liberty and Independence.”PROTECTDefend our sovereignty and safety by maintaining law & order, securing our border,and defending liberty for all Americans.● Restore Law & Order: Back the police against frivolous lawsuits; crush gang violence with federal RICO charges; and deport foreign-student terrorsympathizers and pro-Hamas radicals from American college campuses.● Border Sovereignty: Protect the border and enforce deportation operations; use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to dismantle transnational gangs.● War on Drugs: Treat drug cartel personnel and their financiers as enemy combatants—similar to how we treated al-Qaeda after 9/11—just as President Trump designated regimes in Venezuela. Focus resources on addiction recovery and mental health facilities for the severely addicted.● Defend the Delaware Franchise: Protect Delaware’s corporate preeminence from federal SEC overreach. Simultaneously, I will use my federal platform to urge state leaders to end the judicial activism in the Chancery Court that is driving innovators like Elon Musk to Texas.● American Trade Shield: Enforce a "Reciprocal Trade Act" (reciprocity); use strategic tariffs to penalize nations that do not buy American and shield emerging domestic industries.● Golden Dome Defense: Build a state-of-the-art "Iron Dome" missile defense shield over the US, manufactured 100% domestically. This multi-layered architecture will utilize next-generation directed energy weapons (lasers) and hypersonic interceptors to neutralize threats from space and sea.● Protect Rights in the AI Age: Enforce a strict requirement that all AI models respect the Bill of Rights. Technology must remain a tool for liberty, not a weapon for state control.● Peace Through Strength: Honor NATO alliances but enforce the new Trump standard of requiring allies to spend 5% of GDP on defense. Strategically split the Russia-China alliance by offering diplomatic off-ramps to Russia in exchange for decoupling from Beijing. End the Ukraine war, freeze the battle lines, and declare Ukraine a neutral state.● Defend Our Hemisphere: Enforce the Monroe Doctrine; explicitly deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to own strategic assets, operate critical ports, or position military forces in the Americas. This includes immediate divestment orders for Chinese-owned agricultural land near US military bases like Dover Air Force Base and protecting Delaware farmers from unfair foreign dumping and federal EPA overreach. Ban on foreign adversary control of Hemispheric digital infrastructure.● Veterans First: Facilitate complete non-VA care access (private choice); shift funding from housing illegal aliens to housing homeless veterans and providing therapy for PTSD treatment.● Free Speech Online: Throttle Section 230 liability protections for platforms that use deceptive algorithms to censor or suppress lawful speech; strictly ban the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to protect financial privacy.BUILDLead as a superpower by building the infrastructure and manufacturing base worthyof one. Power it with cheap, reliable energy, and fix the monetary system broken byWall Street greed.● Crush Inflation: Stabilize the dollar and slash energy regulations to naturally drive down borrowing costs and interest rates for working families. Root out fraud, waste, and abuse in our government systems.● Housing Affordability: Focus on cutting federal HUD red tape and environmental regulations (NEPA) that drive up local construction costs for Delaware builders.● Grow American Generational Wealth: Eliminate the federal estate tax to preserve family wealth, and push for federal tax deductions that provideimmediate relief for Delaware homeowners paying high local property taxes.● Strengthen Entitlement Guarantee: Ensure long-term solvency for Social Security and Medicare with no cuts to benefits and no increase in the retirement age; ban taxpayer benefits for illegal aliens and redirect those savings back to the Social Security trust fund.● Pass the MAHA Act: Allocate health care funding directly to Americans, not to insurance companies. Mandate price transparency for all medical services and drugs to promote competition. Separate insurance from ownership/control of care delivery. Remove litigation immunity for drug and vaccine manufacturers. Legalize the ‘Costco Model’ for health insurance.● Energy Dominance: Unleash American oil, natural gas, and coal ("Drill, Baby, Drill"); fund a Manhattan-style program for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) to provide the baseload power necessary for a high-energy industrial and manufacturing superpower and to also power an AI and Bitcoin economy.● National Bank for Infrastructure: Charter a new National Bank to issue public credit for projects like high-speed rail, fusion research, and modern factories - bypassing Wall Street usury and short-termism to build 100-year assets.● Revive Industrial Base: Reshore critical defense and pharmaceutical supply chains to boost productivity of Delaware’s rich legacy in chemical engineering and biotech. Enforce a strict "Buy American" mandate for all military and infrastructure hardware - no waivers.● Financially Firewall Strategic Assets: Legally separate the economy into a protected 'Utility Tier' that shields American homes and hospitals from financial predation, and a deregulated 'Merchant Tier' that unleashes high-risk innovation with zero bailouts. This strategy halts the looting of critical infrastructure while weaponizing American risk capital for the era of great-power competition.● Term Limits: Enact strict term limits: two terms for Senators, six terms for Representatives, and a single six-year term for the President. Enact constitutional reforms that restore the Senate's original design as a defender of States' rights against federal overreach.● Department of War Transformation: Implement "Computational Domain-Organized Architecture" to reorganize the Pentagon using AI agents; usemanufacturing enabled FFRDC to break up contractor monopolies and pivot to low-cost, attritable, mass-producible robotics and drone swarm warfare.● Bitcoin Strategic Asset: End the crypto crackdown; defend the right to self-custody and mine; and establish a Strategic National Bitcoin Stockpile to serve as a hedge against inflation and a defensive asset for national financial security and thermodynamic, digital defense against malign AI algorithms.● Restore the Social Fabric: Ban taxpayer funding for gender transition surgeries; keep men out of women's sports; Incentivize local municipalities through federal block grants to adopt pro-family zoning to promote fatherhood and family.EDUCATEFocus education on the sciences, engineering, physics, and tradecraft in order to winthe AI war and to explore the stars.● Renaissance Engine: For the next hundred years, the building blocks of modern economies are the combined symbiotic relationships of modular nuclear power plants, AI data centers, cryptocurrencies, research centers, and universities. They will form Renaissance Engines - a replicable framework to master nature and knowledge. The US needs to pioneer this approach to reach the stars and bring prosperity to all.● Civilian Genesis Interface: Equip every public library in America with free access to supercomputer-level AI (aligned with President Trump’s Genesis Mission) to bypass Big Tech gatekeepers, democratizing high-level compute to empower local entrepreneurs and self-learners.● Classical Education for AI Architects: The industrial age model trained students to memorize data - a suicide pact in the age of AI. We must invert this model and return to the Classics (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric). Train students in the skills AI cannot replicate: Metaphor, Irony, Geometry, and Polyphony, creating a generation of prompt-engineers and critical thinkers.● Create "Smart Charter" Zones: Champion federal SEC/CFTC regulatory sandboxes that empower the Delaware legislature and Wilmington to become the undisputed global capital for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) incorporation.● Federal Student Loan Exit: Close the Federal Department of Education and return control and tax dollars to the States; strictly enforce the prohibition of federal interference in local curricula and withhold funding from any school pushing Critical Race Theory or gender ideology. Double down on President Trump’s plan to cap federal student loans.● School IP Rights: Retain financial and intellectual property rights for schools and students for any products created using Federal research funding, turning universities into incubators for American ownership rather than foreign theft.● Anti-Spy Waiver for STEM: Require Chinese STEM students to sign a waiver and complete a 4-year "payback" residency in the US to prevent intellectual property theft and ensure American industry benefits from their university training.● Federal Tax Exclusion Zone for Fusion: The nation that commercializes Fusion first will secure perpetual energy hegemony. By exempting qualified fusion companies and their employees from all federal taxation, the U.S. can leverage its tax code to secure the ultimate strategic advantage.— John Shulli's campaign website (September 10, 2026)Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.