Lyle Morris is Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy and National Security at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. Prior to joining ASPI, Lyle was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation leading projects on Chinese military modernization and Asia-Pacific security from 2011-2022. From 2019 to 2021, Morris served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as the Country Director for China, advising OSD on defense relations between the Department of Defense and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and on Indo-Pacific maritime security. He received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for his service. Before joining RAND, Lyle was the 2010–11 Next Generation Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and a research intern with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

Lyle has lived and studied in Beijing, China for four years, where he studied Mandarin at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP) at Tsinghua University and later worked at Dentsu Advertising and the China Economist Journal.

Morris holds an MA in international affairs from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), earning a Certificate in East Asian Studies from Columbia's Weatherhead East Asian Institute; and BA in international business from Western Washington University.