Tom Baker IV is the founder and principal of Ground Truth NC. Before this practice existed, the work did — for over two decades, across some of the most demanding operational environments in the world.

Tom spent ten years in the U.S. Navy. Four of those years he served as a Naval Aircrewman and Electronic Warfare Operator, flying more than 900 hours on the EP-3E ARIES II conducting nationally tasked signals intelligence missions for the National Security Council and combatant commanders worldwide — work that took him to sea, on the ground, and in the sky. He deployed to Iraq in 2009–2010 as a UAS Mission Commander embedded with joint special operations forces, running ISR against terrorist networks targeting Iraq’s parliamentary elections — writing the TTPs for Scan Eagle employment in that environment, which became a program of record across Iraq and Afghanistan.

After leaving active duty, he flew as a rated Scan Eagle pilot for Insitu/Boeing, accumulating 1,000+ flight hours in direct support of SEAL platoons and Special Forces ODAs across Afghanistan and Iraq — including ISR during Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential election and counter-ISIS operations at Al Asad Air Base in 2015.

Stateside, he applied that same analytical discipline to domestic politics: Research Director on a competitive congressional race, opposition research for a statewide legislative targeting project, and four years as North Carolina State Lead for Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative — building and running a statewide threat monitoring and rapid-response network protecting election workers, journalists, officials, and civic organizations across three election cycles.

Ground Truth NC is the direct evolution of that work — intelligence tradecraft, applied where it’s needed most: here, in North Carolina, for the institutions that hold communities together.

Twelfth-generation North Carolinian. Born and raised in Wake County.