Suzanne Spaulding, senior adviser for Homeland Security Program and International Security Program, and former Undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security, will give a talk on "Countering Adversary Attacks on Democracy and the Rule of Law" at the LBJ School on Thursday, April 25. She will speak about ongoing foreign influence operations that go beyond elections to undermine other democratic institutions, such as our justice system, and democracy itself. This talk is part of the Strauss Center's Brumley Speaker Series.
Spaulding served as under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where she was effectively the CEO with a rank equivalent to a four-star general, managing a $3 billion budget and a workforce of 18,000. She was charged with strengthening cybersecurity and protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, and led the transformation of budget, acquisition, analytic and operational processes to bring greater agility and unity of effort to an organization that had experienced dramatic growth through acquisition of new entities and missions over several years.
Throughout her career, Spaulding has advised CEOs, boards and government policymakers on how to manage complex security risks across all industry sectors. At DHS, she led the development and implementation of national policies for infrastructure protection, including support for national security special events at stadiums and other public venues and development of the national infrastructure protection plan; worked with industry to establish CEO-level coordinating councils in the electric and financial services sectors; and chaired the federal government’s Aviation Cybersecurity Initiative to identify and address key cyber vulnerabilities in the national aviation system. Spaulding worked with many foreign governments on critical infrastructure and cybersecurity, including negotiating agreements with China and Israel, and led security regulation of the chemical industry, biometrics and identity management, emergency communications, and the Federal Protective Service.
As a member of the board of directors for the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), Spaulding helped oversee the complex and unprecedented effort to deploy the first nationwide broadband network for public safety. She is currently on the board of directors for George Washington University’s Center for Cyber & Homeland Security; the advisory board of Harvard University’s Defending Digital Democracy project; and the faculty of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Following the 9/11 attacks, she worked with key critical infrastructure sectors as they reviewed their security posture and advised the CEOs of the Business Roundtable. In 2002, she was appointed by Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia to the Secure Commonwealth Panel to advise the governor and the legislature regarding preparedness issues. She was managing partner of the Harbour Group; a principal in the Bingham Consulting Group; and of counsel to Bingham McCutchen, LLP.
Spaulding has served in Republican and Democratic administrations and on both sides of the aisle in Congress. She was general counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and minority staff director for the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She also spent six years at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where she was legal adviser to the director’s Nonproliferation Center. She was a member of the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, which developed a bipartisan national cybersecurity strategy in advance of the 2008 election; executive director of the National Commission on Terrorism and the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction; and a consultant on the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
She is a member of the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Group, former chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and founder of the Cybersecurity Legal Task Force, and was a member of Harvard University’s Long-Term Legal Strategy Project for Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terror. Spaulding has convened and participated in numerous academic and professional advisory panels, has been a frequent commentator in public media, and has often testified before Congress.