Thomas Rid is Professor of Strategic Studies and founding director of the Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. From April to July 2022 he also is a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress.
Rid is the author of the acclaimed
Active Measures, a sweeping history of disinformation (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). His previous book,
Rise of the Machines, (Norton, 2016), tells the story of how cybernetics, a late-1940s theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war. His 2015 article “
Attributing Cyber Attacks” was designed to explain, guide, and improve the identification of network breaches (Journal of Strategic Studies 2015). In 2013 he published
Cyber War Will Not Take Place, now a classic.
Rid’s commentary has appeared in The New York Times and the Washington Post, and he has testified in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as in the German Bundestag and the UK Parliament. His books are widely translated.
From 2011 to 2016, Rid was a professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Between 2003 and 2010, he worked in policy institutes in Berlin, Paris, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC. Rid holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin.
Thomas lives in Georgetown with his wife Annette and two sons.
Disinformation—or Active Measures, in old-school intelligence terms—is as old as modern intelligence agencies. The rise of disinformation was linked to the ideological clashes that defined the 20th century, and the entire Cold War. As the Soviet Union went down, the internet went up. And after a short hiatus, disinformation was back with a vengeance. This class explores the history, evolution, and metamorphosis of disinformation over the past century.
Cybersecurity is one of the 21st century’s top security concerns. Modern societies rely on the internet, connected devices, and computer-controlled systems, including infrastructure with life—critical applications. The class provides a solid foundation for tomorrow’s leaders to come to terms with one of the most challenging new areas of national security. INFOSEC I and II are offered as a two-term class (INFOSEC I a prerequisite for INFOSEC II). It covers cybersecurity from farm to table starting with the big-picture cyberwar debate; moves to “101” sessions on The Internet, Cryptography, Network Forensics, Industrial Control Systems, Mobile Security, and Open Source Intelligence; and then applies these new tools to higher-level discussions (Attribution, Commercial Espionage, Bulk Collection, Crypto Anarchy, Cyber Crime, Disinformation, Deterrence, and Legal Aspects). Moving from technical to political levels of analysis, this focus is a no-nonsense approach to the politics of cybersecurity and focuses on a triad of technical detail, history, and conceptual clarity. Optional technical labs are organized by students. Students translate between technical and political spheres, and will move into the digital forensics and threat intelligence fields after completing this class. Coursework requirements are term-specific. It is possible for students to take only the fall term (INFOSEC I). Preference will be given to students who commit to both INFOSEC I & II. Note: no technical background is required. Willingness to learn fast and invest time to understand some technical foundations of cybersecurity. Bring a laptop into class (you must be able to install software; any OS is fine).