Johns Hopkins SAIS names Cybersecurity Expert Thomas Rid as Professor of Strategic Studies

Johns Hopkins SAIS names Cybersecurity Expert Thomas Rid as Professor of Strategic Studies
 
The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) has named Thomas Rid as Professor of Strategic Studies.
 
Rid brings to Johns Hopkins more than a decade of experience in international security and intelligence studies, previously serving as a Professor of Security Studies in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where he developed a Cyber Security module that bridged the gap between technological and political debates.
 
“Thomas Rid is a leading expert in a field of growing importance to foreign policy and security issues,” Dean Vali Nasr said. “His scholarship brings together technological insight, political considerations, social developments and strategic context in discussing cybersecurity as a leading concern of our era. We are delighted to welcome him back to Johns Hopkins SAIS nearly a decade after his tenure as a visiting scholar.”
 
He has published numerous articles and books, most recently Rise of the Machines (2016), a history of how cybernetics, a vintage theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war. Among his books are Cyber War Will Not Take Place (2013), Understanding Counterinsurgency (2010), and War and Media Operations (2007). His article, “Attributing Cyber Attacks,” in the Journal of Strategic Studies explored the identification of network breaches. Rid closely tracked the election interference in 2016, and was one of the first named sources to call out the hack-and-leak as a Russian intelligence operation, only one day after details became public.
 
“This is a fabulous appointment,” said Eliot Cohen, Director of the Strategic Studies Program. “Thomas Rid is one of the world's leading experts on cyber conflict: unusually, he combines both technical expertise and a big picture understanding of the broader strategic and political issues. Even before arriving here, he is making his mark as a scholar and expert voice in the public square.”
 
Rid has recently shared his expertise on information security through testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as insights on intelligence with the German Bundestag and the UK Parliament.
 
He has held positions at the RAND Corporation in Washington, the Institut Français des Relations Internationales in Paris, and served as a visiting scholar at Hebrew University and Shalem Center in Jerusalem. From 2007 to 2008, Rid served as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He holds a PhD and MA in Social Science from Humboldt University in Berlin.