Maggie Smith
Senior Fellow
Dr. Smith’s research and teaching interests focus on social media and the effects of disinformation campaigns as a national security challenge and cyberspace operations. She teaches cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point in classes on Cyberspace Strategy, Planning and Operations, American Politics, and her senior elective on Politics and the Internet, that investigates how US democratic institutions have changed with the internet, to include a citizen’s relationship to their elected officials, the governing institutions that structure American society, and the impact of information democratization on our institutions.
Dr. Smith also teaches a graduate-level course on Near-Peer and Great Power Competition at the University of Maryland that investigates the geopolitics of the modern world and the tensions and relationships that shape state behavior, conflict, competition, and cooperation. She is also affiliated faculty at the Modern War Institute at West Point and serves as the director of the Competition in Cyberspace Project.
Prior to teaching, Dr. Smith served as a Cyber Operations Planner and Mission Commander for the Cyber National Mission Force and was a computer network operations Senior Watch Officer in the Remote Operations Center at the National Security Agency, responsible for all computer network exploitation operations during her watch. Originally, she enlisted in the Army's Signal Corps as a 25P, Microwave Systems Operator, and served in a variety of technical positions in electronic maintenance shops, rapid deployable communications teams, and network engineering teams in Germany, Iraq, Aberdeen Proving Ground, and Fort George G. Meade, respectively.
Dr. Smith was commissioned as a Military Intelligence Officer from Georgetown University ROTC through the Army's Green to Gold Active Duty Master's Degree Program. She has published in Public Administration Review, NDU PRISM, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, Modern Warfare Institute, and The Conversation. Dr. Smith is a member of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the International Studies Association.