Raised in Belfast, Samuel P.N. Cook graduated from West Point in 2000 with a degree in European history and was commissioned into the U.S. Army Cavalry. In Iraq he served two tours — as regimental adjutant to Colonel H.R. McMaster during the battle of Tal Afar, and later in troop command during the Surge.
He came home to an M.A. in World History from NYU and taught Russian history at West Point for three years — the scholar's lens layered onto the soldier's. Long before 2022, he understood exactly what Russia's empire does to the nations on its borderlands.
The next chapter was a different weapon: the story. In 2014 he founded James Cook Media in Poland on a single idea — that marketing is really storytelling, and storytelling is how you change what people believe. In 2018 he moved to Kyiv and built a tech startup there. He didn't parachute into Ukraine when the war began — he already lived there. It was home.
On February 12, 2022, he evacuated his company to western Ukraine. When the full-scale invasion began, he got others out — and came back. In the invasion's first days he founded The Borderlands Group, and the Borderlands Foundation the same week. While the battle for Kyiv raged, he started recording: daily podcasts, interviews, the testimony of people the world was about to forget.
“I came to Ukraine to record one war. I found three million people whose stories no one was writing down.”
Today he works both fronts. Through The Borderlands Group he has represented 15+ Western defense companies inside Ukraine — validating their technology under real jamming at the real front — companies that together have closed $58MM in sales and raised over $150MM. Through Ukraine for Founders he teaches defense founders what the front actually demands.
“You don't go to Ukraine to profit. You go to learn — and you don't charge American prices.”
And through the Borderlands Foundation he built the stage this site exists for: the Ukraine Freedom Summit — Washington, then London, next Dallas — where the world's leaders and Ukraine's heroes meet. This November he leads the delegation opening the road there. The road to Dallas →
