Ronald “Ron” Marks III is a 40 plus-year veteran of the U.S. National Security Community and a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. As a former CIA official, Ron was a Clandestine Service officer and a Congressional Senate Liaison for five DCI’s. He went on to serve on Capitol Hill as Intelligence Council to Senate Majority Leaders Robert Dole and Trent Lott. Returning to the Executive Branch, Ron served as a Senior Budget Director at the National Reconnaissance Office, the Senior Director of Russia/Central Asia/East Europe desk of State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, and as Special Assistant to the Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support. He has served on a number of advisory groups at the Central Intelligence Agency and in The Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Marks is currently a Visiting Professor at George Mason University, Schar School of Politics and Government where he has developed classes on National Security Technology and Policy and Congress and Intelligence Oversight. He is also a Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University – Krieger School of Arts and Sciences – Advanced Academic Programs where he lectures on Homeland Security Intelligence and The Challenges of Ethics in Intelligence.

In a non-academic role, as President of ZPN National Security and Cyber Strategies, Marks and a team of advisors guide private firms in the challenges of dealing with the DC market place. Marks is also an Outside Director on the Foreign Ownership Control (FOCI) Board of Informatica Federal Operations Corporation, a software firm based in Redwood, CA. A Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Ron also serves as a Founding Board Member of the non-profit Open Source Intelligence Foundation.

After leaving government, Ron has been a successful senior defense contractor and a software firm owner. He led national security business ventures at SAIC and SRA and was picked to re-open British Telecom’s IT Federal Practice. He was then hired to re-establish the Washington, D.C. office of Oxford Analytica, a UK based international consultancy firm, leading it for six years.

In 2011, Ron was selected to be Director of Battelle Memorial Institute’s Cyber Doctrine Program where he worked to delineate a United States Government Cyber Doctrine that frames the uses and limits of America’s cyber activities both domestically and internationally. From 2016-19, Marks served as Chairman of the Intelligence and Cyber Program for the Texas A&M DC Campus (formerly the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security) where he was invited to build its Intelligence and Cyber M.A. program.

In the Spring of 2020 Ron was appointed the Robert J. Dole Fellow at the University of Kansas’ Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics. There, he conducted a series of seminars entitled “Spying in the Cyber Age.”

In addition to many journal articles and media appearances, Ron is author of the book: Spying in America in the Post 9/11 World: Domestic Threat and the Need for Change—a book that focuses on the challenges and legalities of U.S. Domestic Intelligence collection in the Internet age. https://www.amazon.com/Spying-America-Post-World-International/dp/0313391416

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