Nina Kollars

Dr. Nina Kollars is an associate professor in the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute. She holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in political science and an M.A. from GWU in international relations. She is a senior adjunct scholar at Center for a New American Security; a Brute Krulak Center fellow at Marine Corps University; an executive board member of Cyber Conflict Studies Association; and an editorial board member for Texas National Security Review. She publishes on cybersecurity, hackers and military innovation. She presented her own hacker project at DefCon27, “Confessions of a Nespresso Money Mule.” She will soon publish “Trustworthy Deviants: White Hat Hackers and Security.”

Erica Borghard is a resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, which aims to critically examine the core assumptions of American grand strategy and propose fresh, innovative ideas for US foreign policy. Erica’s own work addresses US grand strategy, with a particular focus on the strategic implications of emerging technologies; public-private partnerships and resilience; and covert action and proxy warfare.

Erica continues to serve as a senior director on the US Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a Congressional commission established to develop a comprehensive national strategy to defend the United States in cyberspace. Previously, Erica was an assistant professor in the Army Cyber Institute at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Prior to that, Erica was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow, with placement at JPMorgan Chase and US Cyber Command. Erica also served as an assistant professor and executive director of the Rupert H. Johnson Grand Strategy Program in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point.

Erica has published on topics ranging from grand strategy, cyber strategy and policy, coercion and military intervention, and international crisis bargaining. Her academic work has appeared in numerous journals, including American Political Science Review, Security Studies, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Orbis, The Cyber Defense Review, and Survival. Erica has also published opinion pieces in outlets such as The National Interest, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, NetPolitics, and The Washington Post. Erica’s co-edited book volume, US National Security Reform: Reassessing the National Security Act of 1947, explores the evolution of American grand strategy and offers policy recommendations for the contemporary environment. Erica’s co-authored book, Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace, forthcoming in 2021 with the Bridging the Gap series at Oxford University Press, challenges the conventional wisdom about escalation risks in cyberspace. She is also currently editing a book volume on the research behind the Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s work, as well as writing her forthcoming book on proxy warfare.

Erica received her PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. She is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University

Jenny is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative and Ph.D. Candidate at Columbia University’s Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on building a systematic logic of cyber coercion using formal models, identifying conditions under which certain cyber capabilities can or cannot be used to coerce adversaries. She is currently building a series of models on ransomware and the use of encryption for coercive effects.

Jenny also conducts research on North Korea and security issues in East Asia. She is a co-author of the 2015 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report North Korea’s Cyber Operations: Strategy and Responses, published by Rowman & Littlefield. She was a 2019 Summer Associate at RAND, where she conducted research on North Korea’s social media-based disinformation campaigns.

Jenny received her MA and BS each from the Security Studies Program (SSP) and the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University. She has presented her work on North Korea’s cyber operations at the Brookings Institution, CSIS, and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, and has provided multiple government briefings and media interviews on the topic.

Max Smeets is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS). He has published widely on cyber statecraft, strategy and risk. Next to his scholarly publications, Max is a frequent contributor to policy outlets, including Washington Post, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, Slate, Cipher Brief, and CFR.

Max is co-founder and Director of the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative (ECCRI.eu), an organization promoting the interdisciplinary study of cyber conflict and statecraft in Europe and beyond. He is also an Affiliate at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation and Research Associate at the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs, University of Oxford.

He was previously a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Stanford University CISAC and a College Lecturer at Keble College, University of Oxford. He has also held research and fellowship positions at New America, Columbia University SIPA, Sciences Po CERI, and NATO CCD COE. Before his academic career, Max worked in finance in London and Amsterdam.

He received a BA in Economics, Politics and Statistics summa cum laude from University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University and an M.Phil (Brasenose College) and DPhil (St. John’s College) in International Relations from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Melissa K. Griffith is a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC); and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies (CSS). She works at the intersection between technology and national security with a specialization in cybersecurity.

Griffith’s current book project investigates how relatively small countries, with limited resources, have become significant providers of national cyber-defense for their populations alongside far larger states such as the U.S. Her work sheds important light on the components and dynamics of cyber power and cyber conflict, as well as the vital role that public-private cooperation and both security and economic policy play in cyber-defense. Concurrent research projects examine (1) the security implications of 5G, (2) collective defense and resilience in cyberspace, (3) emerging technologies and great power competition, and (4) smaller states and power in international politics.

Griffith holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley; an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley; and a B.A. in International Relations from Agnes Scott College. She was an English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan with the Fulbright Program from 2012-2013.

For additional information (including a comprehensive list of publications, prior positions and affiliations, presentations and public appearances, and teaching experience) please visit www.melissakgriffith.com.

Lennart Maschmeyer is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto and an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Lennart’s research examines the nature of cyber power, the operational dynamics involved in using different instruments of power and their resulting strategic utility. His other research interests include past and current intelligence operations and the role of non-state actors in cyber conflict. Lennart is the founder co-chair of the FIRST Threat Intel Coalition SIG, an initiative to assist vulnerable civil society organizations in preventing, detecting and mitigating cyber attacks.

Dr. Trey Herr is the director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative under the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. His team works on cybersecurity and geopolitics including cloud computing, the security of the internet, supply chain policy, cyber effects on the battlefield, and growing a more capable cybersecurity policy workforce. Previously, he was a senior security strategist with Microsoft handling cloud computing and supply chain security policy as well as a fellow with the Belfer Cybersecurity Project at Harvard Kennedy School and a non-resident fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He holds a PhD in Political Science and BS in Musical Theatre and Political Science.

Dr. Marc M. Kolenko is a Cyber Security Engineering Professional with over 35 years of notable success directing a broad range of Enterprise IT initiatives in both the private sector and Government. Kolenko is currently a Lead Cyber SME at Modern Technology Solutions Inc. (MTSI – Alexandria, VA). He’s responsible for delivering Defensive/Offensive Cyber Operations (DCO & OCO) Strategic Planning & Policy Guidance, Counter Unmanned Aeronautical Systems (C-UAS) Solutions, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Information Assurance (IA) & Compliance, and Systems Security Engineering solutions that aid clients with meeting cybersecurity mandates (e.g., NIST/CSF/RMF, FedRAMP, CNSS 1253, and the CNCI). 

He currently supports OSD’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) and FBI’s Cyber Division/NCIJTF focusing on protecting critical technologies produced by select DIB/CDC partners. Prior to this, Dr. Kolenko was Chief, Cyber Security, Army Rapid Capabilities & Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) supporting Directed Energy, Hypersonics, and Space-based cyber solutions for Joint DOD communities. Dr. Kolenko also supported the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of the Air Force as a Senior Cybersecurity DCO and Compliance Adviser. He also served the Office Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Assistant Secretary of Defense, Homeland Defense & Global Security, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Defense Continuity & Mission Assurance as a Cybersecurity Threat Adviser.

Between 2004 and 2012, while at Intelligent Decision, Booz Allen Hamilton, and General Dynamics, he served in both operational and engineering positions to include Information Assurance Manager and Chief Engineer for a combined DOD and Intel Community collaborative fusion center where he led IA/DCO, CERT, and Cyber-operations in support of ISR missions of the highest National priority. Kolenko’s professional skills span the systems engineering lifecycle. Kolenko’s expertise also includes managing DCO R&D efforts as a principal investigator.

A former decorated Officer, Kolenko started his career at Onizuka AFB’s Air Force Satellite Control Network’s Program Office as a Network Project Manager. After separating from the AF in 1990, Kolenko worked for both Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN, creators of the ARPAnet) and Advanced Network & Systems (ANS, developers of the NSFnet). In the mid-90s, Kolenko took his Internet business experience to Europe assisting Fischer & Lorenz (Copenhagen, Denmark), an IT consulting firm that served both the European Union and commercial enterprises, launch its Internet Business and Security Practice. In 1999, Kolenko developed Nortel’s NexGen Networks Practice. As its manager, he was responsible for all aspects of solution’s development and fulfillment. In 2003, Kolenko returned to the Government joining General Dynamics Network Systems (now GDIT) as technical lead for next-generation, network-centric solutions in support of Federal Civil, DoD, and IC IT initiatives.

Kolenko received his BSEE from Norwich University (Northfield, VT), MS Telecom Management from Golden Gate University (San Francisco, CA), and his Doctorate (Sc.D.) in Cybersecurity from Capitol Technology University (Laurel, MD). He has authored papers for both Government and Private Sector clients.

With degrees in engineering, economics, and comparative complex organization systems /political science, Dr. Chris C. Demchak is the US Naval War College’s Grace M. Hopper Chair of Cyber Security and Senior Cyber Scholar, Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute (CIPI) – formerly the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies (C3S) which she co-founded and directed. Her research and many publications address global cyberspace as a globally shared, complex, insecure ‘substrate’ underlying the critical organizations of digitized societies, creating ‘cybered conflict’ and a resulting, rising ‘Cyber Westphalia’ of sovereign competitive complex socio-technical-economic systems (STESs), and inducing an urgent survival need for a ‘Cyber Operational Resilience Alliance’ (CORA) among advanced democratic allies. Demchak takes a systemic approach in focusing on emergent structures, comparative institutional evolution, adversary/defensive use of systemic cybered tools and artificial intelligence, virtual worlds/gaming for operationalized organizational learning, and in modeling systemic resilience (‘cybered conflict model’) against normal or adversary imposed surprises that disrupt or disable largescale national systems.  Having studied the LISP programming language – as well as serving as a military officer, she has taught international security studies and management, comparative organization theory, enterprise information systems, and cybersecurity for international/ national security issues. Recent articles include “The Four Horsemen of AI” (in Wright, ed. AI, China, Russia, and the Global Order, 2020) and “ ‘Sea-hacking’ Sun Tsu: Deception in Global AI/Cybered Conflict and Navies” (Tangredi, ed. AI at War, forthcoming 2021).  Recent books include Designing Resilience (2010 co-edit); Wars of Disruption and Resilience (2011); and two manuscripts in production tentatively entitled Cyber Westphalia – States, Socio-Economic Resilience, and the Rise of Great Systems Conflict, and Cyber Command: Organizing for Great Systems Conflict.

As the Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner of Delta Risk, Dr. Rattray brings an exceptional record in establishing strategies for cyber security across both the government and private sectors. He has over 28 years of experience in intelligence and cyber operations, with a focus in cyber defense, cyber threat mitigation, and development of sound policy and strategy in order to address advanced cyber threats facing public and private organizations and their critical infrastructure. Dr. Rattray also is focused on providing thought leadership on broad cyber policy, issues and strategy. He was the driving force in the establishment of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association (CCSA) to ensure US national efforts were guided by a deeper well of intellectual capital involving private industry, think tanks, government and academia.