vailsymposium

James Andrew Lewis is a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Before joining CSIS, he worked at the Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a member of the Senior Executive Service. His government experience includes a broad range of political-military, negotiating, and intelligence assignments. He was an adviser to the U.S. Southern Command for Operation Just Cause, the U.S. Central Command for Operation Desert Shield, and the U.S. Central American Task Force. He led the U.S. delegation to the Wassenaar Arrangement Experts Group on advanced civilian and military technologies. He worked on presidential policies for arms transfers, on commercial space remote sensing, on policies to secure and commercialize the Internet, and on encryption and lawful access to communications. He was the Commerce Department lead for national security and espionage concerns related to high-technology trade with China.

Lewis was the rapporteur for the UN Group of Government Experts on Information Security for the successful 2010, 2013, and 2015 sessions. He has led long-running Track 1.5 discussions on cybersecurity with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. He has served on several Federal Advisory Committees including as chair of the Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing, a member of the Committees on Spectrum Management and International Communications Policy, and as an adviser on the security implications of foreign investment in the United States. Lewis has authored numerous publications since coming to CSIS on a broad array of topics, including innovation, space, information technology, globalization, deterrence, and surveillance. He was the director for CSIS’s Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency and is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity who is frequently quoted in the media. He has testified numerous times before Congress. Lewis’s current research examines the effect of technology on warfare and how the Internet has changed politics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.