James Lewis

James Andrew Lewis is a senior vice president and director of the Technology Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He has authored numerous publications on the relationship between technology, innovation, and national power. His current research examines international security and governance in cyberspace, the geopolitics of innovation, the future of warfare, and the effect of the internet on politics. Lewis is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity and technology and was one of the first to approach cybersecurity as a policy and strategic problem. His writings include the best-selling Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, the national cybersecurity strategy cited by President Obama in the first speech by a U.S. president on cybersecurity and that became a template for cyber strategy in other countries. Lewis was the rapporteur for the United Nations' successful 2010, 2013, and 2015 Group of Government Experts on Information Security, whose reports set out the global agenda for cybersecurity by emphasizing norms for responsible state behavior, confidence building, and capacity-building measures.

Before joining CSIS, Lewis 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 included a range of politico-military and negotiating assignments, including the development of groundbreaking policies on commercial remote sensing, encryption, and advanced conventional weapons. He was assigned as a political advisor to the U.S. Southern Command for Operation Just Cause, the U.S. Central Command for Operation Desert Shield, and the Central American Task Force. Lewis served on the U.S. delegations to the Cambodian peace process and the Permanent Five talks on arms transfers and nonproliferation, and he negotiated bilateral agreements on transfers of military technology to Asia and the Middle East. He led the U.S. delegation to the Wassenaar Arrangement Experts Group on advanced civilian and military technologies. Lewis led a long-running Track 2 dialogue on cybersecurity with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. He has served as a member of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, the Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy, and the Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing and as an advisor to government agencies on the security and intelligence implications of foreign investment in the United States. Lewis is frequently quoted in the media and has testified numerous times before Congress. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.