Maggie Smith, PhD

Project Cyber Director, Cyber Competition Special Project

Maggie Smith is an Army cyber officer currently serving as an Army planner. Maggie’s research interests focus on non-state actors and cyberspace operations, investigating the geopolitics of modern conflict and the tensions and relationships that shape state behavior, conflict, competition, and cooperation. Maggie commissioned as a military intelligence officer but switched to cyber in 2014 after serving as a computer network operations senior watch officer in the Remote Operations Center at the National Security Agency, responsible for all computer network exploitation operations during her watch. Her other positions include serving as a cyber operations planner and mission commander for the Cyber National Mission Force and as an assistant professor and researcher at the Army Cyber Institute and the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy. Originally, Maggie enlisted in the Army’s Signal Corps as a 25P, microwave systems operator, and served in a variet of technical positions in electronic maintenance shops, rapid deployable communications teams, and network engineering teams. Maggie earned a masters of public policy and her commission through the Army’s green to gold program at Georgetown University and her PhD in public policy and public administration from George Washington University. She is a senior fellow at American University, Washington College of Law’s Tech, Law, and Security Program, graduate faculty at University of Maryland’s MPS in Security and Terrorims Studies program, and a Pat Tillman Foundation Scholar.