Happy New Year and Welcome to 2023!

As the new year calls us to reflect back on 2022, I wanted to highlight some of NSI’s accomplishments from this past year and share how we plan to hit the ground running in 2023.

As we mentioned at the end of 2021, our plan for 2022 was to double down on our work in NSI’s core focus areas at the intersection of emerging technologies and national security and the larger threat posed by adversaries who engage in repression at home, spread it overseas, and threaten American interests across the globe. And focus on these areas we did.

On the technology side, among other things, NSI held a series of events on Capitol Hill talking directly to staff about the importance protecting American technology innovation domestically as part of the expanding great power competition with China, we kicked off a series of public events and published a set of NSI expert recommendations on how to the U.S. can ensure that we remain the home of cutting edge fintech innovation while also ensuring American national security interests are accounted for, and we published papers talking about the role that the American private sector plays in securing our economic and national security.

On the global repression and adversaries side, we spent a significant amount of time focused on China’s human rights abuses, its efforts to threaten Taiwan and shape the global political and economic environment, holding events and published papers on these topics. Of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a key focus as well, as NSI experts and leaders publicly advocated for the United States to engage in more effective support to the Ukrainian government both in the lead up to and following the invasion. And we provided Congress with a series of concrete, actionable recommendations on how best to deal with the continuing threat that Iran poses to its own people, the region, and American interests globally.

On the academic side of our operation, we continued to diversify our base of offerings for our national security students in the JD, JM, and Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LLM programs by bringing in new faculty members, including key practitioners from the government, as well as hosting the fifth year of our summer aboard program with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch with a return to Italy in the post-pandemic environment, along with two senior federal judges and a host of national security leaders. We also hosted a series of in-person and online events for students and policymakers, including events with key leaders like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Congressman and CIA officer Will Hurd, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, and the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division Matt Olsen, to name just a few.

We also rebooted our core Fault Lines podcast going from a weekly program of 40-45 minutes to a three-times a week, short form podcast focused on a single key issue, and we continued to expand the reach of our blog, The SCIF, and the path-breaking Iron Butterfly podcast, telling the stories of amazing women in the intelligence community.

In the next year, we plan to continue to expand our educational programs for our students and policymakers alike and to focus on provide actionable expertise and solutions to leaders on Capitol Hill. Our focus areas will remain consistent this year, as we expand our programs that talk about intersection of technologies and national security, starting off the year with events on the role of the public and private sector in defending Ukraine’s cyber environment and the future of U.S. economic security in an era of significant financial technology change, and as we continue to talk about the export of global repression by countries like China, Russia, and Iran.

In addition, we’ll have some exciting announcements later this year launching new content for both students and policymakers, a cool location for our summer program, and some new, innovative approaches in NSI’s key focus areas to create a more consistent and lasting impact with policymakers.

We hope you continue to engage in these efforts going forward, and if you have not yet taken the opportunity to take part in our many events, papers, and networking opportunities, we hope that you will join us in the new year and help us create the conditions that will lead to a stronger, more unified, and more secure America!

Sincerely,

Jamil N. Jaffer
Founder & Executive Director, National Security Institute