The overarching question imparting urgency to this exploration is: Can U.S.-Russian contention in cyberspace cause the two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war? In considering this question we were constantly reminded of recent comments by a prominent U.S. arms control expert: At least as dangerous as the risk of an actual cyberattack, he observed, is cyber operations’ “blurring of the line between peace and war.” Or, as Nye wrote, “in the cyber realm, the difference between a weapon and a non-weapon may come down to a single line of code, or simply the intent of a computer program’s user.”
Biography
Jeff Fields currently serves as an Assistant Special Agent in Charge, where he leads the Counterintelligence (CI) Branch for the FBI in San Francisco. He previously served as an FBI Supervisory Special Agent within the National Security Division, where he led an interagency cyber-network operations group targeting Counterterrorism (CT) threats emanating from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Prior to this post, he worked global CT and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) matters, deploying to Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa on embedded assignments with U.S. Special Operations Command.
Jeff has acquired substantial expertise on national security policy and the complex geo-politics of Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. In addition, he has firsthand experience tackling the challenges encountered at the intersection of intelligence and cyber-technology. As an FBI Adjunct Faculty member, he is an agency subject matter expert on CI, CT, HUMINT operations, and Violent Extremism.
Jeff is fully committed to addressing the cybersecurity and intelligence community’s diversity deficit, and he volunteers as a mentor with two-nonprofits, Girl Security and the Fiver Children’s Foundation. Mr. Fields is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and graduated from Hampton University with a B.S. in Biology, and he has a Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Last Updated: Sep 20, 2023, 9:49am