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Garrett Graff        

Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity & Technology Program

Garrett Graff is executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity and Technology Program. A magazine journalist and historian, he covered politics, technology, and national security for a dozen years. Graff has written for publications from WIRED to The New York Times and served as the editor of two of Washington’s most prestigious magazines, Washingtonian and POLITICO Magazine, which he helped lead to its first National Magazine Award, the industry’s highest honor.

He is also the author of multiple books, including The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House, about the role of technology in the 2008 presidential race; The Threat Matrix: The FBI At War, which traces the history of the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts; and Raven Rock*, about the US government’s Cold War doomsday plans. His e-book, “Angel is Airborne: JFK’s Final Flight From Dallas,” tells the dramatic story of the Air Force One flight back from Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, following the assassination of President Kennedy, and was a finalist for the Livingston Award for National Reporting, the highest award given to journalists under 35.

His online career began with his time as Governor Howard Dean’s first webmaster, and in 2005, he was the first blogger accredited to cover a White House press briefing. His notebook from that first White House briefing is on view at the Newseum. For seven years, he also taught social media, digital campaigns and digital journalism at Georgetown University’s journalism and communications programs.

He regularly speaks on technology, politics, and national security at places like the Harvard Business School, the Pacific Council on International Policy, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and the National Press Club, as well as at various universities, companies, trade groups, and also to international audiences including Germany’s Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the BBC’s NewsXChange, and Israel’s IDC Herzliya.

Graff has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Fox News, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, CBC, the BBC, National Geographic TV, Al Jazeera English, and various public radio programs, including “This American Life.”

He is the board chair of the National Conference on Citizenship—a Congressionally-chartered nonprofit focused on civic engagement that was founded by Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower—and in his home state of Vermont, he sits on the board of Vermont Public Radio (VPR) and the board of commissioners for the Burlington Housing Authority, and is a member of the Vermont Community Foundation.

Speech Topics

The FBI: The World’s Police Force

With almost no public discussion or notice, the FBI has evolved to be the only truly global crime-fighting organization. Whereas the FBI was originally conceived to be a domestic law enforcement organization—the CIA was supposed to handle American interests overseas—with cases increasingly focused on cybercrime and organized crime groups like the Russian mafia, al-Qaeda terror networks, and Central American or Asian gangs, the FBI now operates in more than a third of all countries every day and has hundreds of personnel deployed internationally. They’ve even investigated a case in Antarctica. In fact, their overseas force is now roughly a tenth of the size of the entire State Department’s foreign service. In some countries, the FBI has unique partnerships with local police that allow them to operate as if they’re in the United States.

Ten Years After 9/11—Are We Safer?

What’s worked in the U.S. response? What hasn’t? Are we safer today? How has the government’s response to the war on terror matured and evolved? Plus, why the U.S. has settled on just two main antiterrorism tools: Handcuffs and Hellfire missiles.

Ten Things To Know About Terrorism Today.

The threat of terrorism today looks very different than it did in the early years after 9/11. Al-Qaeda, while weakened, has developed a global affiliate network and turned the internet into its best recruiting tool ever. While it spent years trying to launch massive, catastrophic attacks, its ambitions have evolved: The new emphasis is attacks “on the cheap,” like the cargo plane printer cartridge plot, or “home-grown radical,” like the Times Square bombing. In fact, the FBI is arresting a terror plot every few weeks now with very little press attention.

News

‘I’d Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This’
On the morning of May 1, 2011, most Americans had never heard of Abbottabad. By that night, the dusty midsize city near the mountains of northwest Pakistan was the center of the biggest story in the world. A team of U.S. Navy SEALs had just descended by helicopter on a high-walled mansion there in the dark of night, located the globe’s most hunted man and killed him. Read more…
The Man Who Speaks Softly—and Commands a Big Cyber Army
Meet General Paul Nakasone. He reined in chaos at the NSA and taught the US military how to launch pervasive cyberattacks. And he did it all without you noticing. In the years before he became America’s most powerful spy, Paul Nakasone acquired an unusually personal understanding of the country’s worst intelligence failures.

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