Joel Brenner

Joel Brenner is a senior research fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies, where his work concerns the future of intelligence, international conflict in the gray zone between war and peace and the protection of the electronic networks that control critical infrastruc­ture.

In government, Brenner was Senior Counsel at the National Security Agency (2009-2010), advising Agency leadership on the public-private effort to create better Internet security; the head of US counterintelligence under the Director of National Intelligence (2009-2010); and NSA’s Inspector General (2002-2006), responsible for that agency’s top-secret internal audits and investigations. Early in his career he was a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Anti­trust Division. He has extensive trial and arbitration experience in a long career in private law practice in Washington.

Brenner is a director of Nokia of America Corporation, a member of the board of managers of Endgame Systems LLC, and a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an advisor to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Secu­rity and is the author of America The Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime and Warfare, in paperback as Glass Houses: Privacy, Secrecy, and Cyber Insecurity in a Transparent World.