Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute, and an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the National Security Law & Policy Program and the nation’s first Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LL.M at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Jamil is also an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm; and serves on the advisory boards of IronNet Cybersecurity, a NYSE-listed cyber collective defense company; U.S. Strategic Metals, North America’s largest primary producer of cobalt, a critical mineral used in EV batteries, aerospace, and other national security applications; and 4iQ, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts, and Amber, a digital authentication and verification startup.
Among other things, Jamil also currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Board of Advisors for the Global Cyber Alliance, the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Tech Innovation, the Advisory Board of the International Institute of Justice and the Rule of Law, the Executive Committee of the Reagan Institute Strategy Group, and is a member of the Center for a New American Security’s Artificial Intelligence and National Security Task Force and the CNAS Digital Freedom Forum. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Immediately prior to his current positions, Jamil served for six-and-a-half years as a senior business leader at IronNet Cybersecurity, helping take the company from a bootstrapped first-year technology products startup through two rounds of venture capital fundraising, growing from 40 employees to over 300, and through its listing on New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). In his role as IronNet’s Senior Vice President for Strategy, Partnerships & Corporate Development, Jamil worked directly for the co-CEOs of the company, Gen (ret.) Keith B. Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency and Founding Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and Bill Welch, the former COO of Zscaler and Duo; in that role, Jamil led all of the company’s strategic and technology partnership efforts, including developing go-to-market and technology integration plans with some of the largest cloud platforms and cybersecurity companies in the market, evaluating potential acquisition targets, and developing overall corporate strategy and thought leadership around collective security and collaborative defense in the cyber arena.

Before he joined IronNet, Jamil served in the federal government in a variety of senior national security roles, holding a TS/SCI security clearance, including on the leadership team of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Chief Counsel & Senior Advisor to Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) and as a senior staff member of the House Intelligence Committee under Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI), where he led the drafting of the nation’s first cyber threat intelligence sharing legislation. Jamil also as well as in the Bush Administration on the leadership team of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, where he led the division’s work on the President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) and advised the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command’s predecessor organization, the Joint Function Component Command for Network Warfare (JFCC-NW), on matters related to cyber intelligence collection and offensive cyber activities. Jamil also served as a commissioned officer in the White House as an Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush working on national security matters.

Jamil is an honors graduate of UCLA, the University of Chicago Law School, and the United States Naval War College, and previously served as a law clerk to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Jamil also previously served a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, was an outside advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and taught classes at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the National Intelligence University.