Deep Dive Episode 195 – President Biden’s Executive Order on Foreign-Controlled Apps
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
In June, President Biden revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to ban TikTok and...
The Regulatory Transparency Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort dedicated to fostering discussion and a better understanding of regulatory policies.
Jennifer Hay, Jamil N. Jaffer, Margaret A. Peterlin, Matthew Feeney
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
In June, President Biden revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to ban TikTok and...
Two trends in social media law and policy are headed for conflict: Aggressive takedowns of...
Matthew Feeney, Jennifer Hay, Jamil N. Jaffer, Margaret A. Peterlin
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
In June, President Biden revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to ban TikTok and...
A Regulatory Transparency Project Teleforum
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) in 2012 determined that forearm stabilizing...
Should “Big Tech” be required to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF) in order...
Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, Department of Justice
Deputy Secretary of Energy
James P. Danly was sworn in as Deputy Secretary on June 9, 2025.
Before arriving at the Department, Deputy Secretary Danly was a partner and the Energy Regulatory Group leader at Skadden in Washington, D.C. This followed his service at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, first as the Commission’s general counsel then as the commissioner and chairman.
Deputy Secretary Danly was an officer in the United States Army. He served two tours in Iraq, receiving a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
A graduate of Yale University, Deputy Secretary Danly earned his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School. He clerked for Judge Danny J. Boggs of the Sixth Circuit.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Jesse, the former third-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, helps clients with their most difficult litigation and regulatory issues─whether that means defending against an enforcement action, pursuing high-stakes litigation and appeals, navigating regulatory thickets at federal and state agencies, or crafting a comprehensive strategy to manage a crisis. He approaches these problems with the knowledge gained both from his broad private-practice experience and from having served at the highest levels of federal and state government.
Jesse has experience across a range of substantive and regulatory areas. He has sued the federal government and has also been one of its top law-enforcement officials; he has represented states and has also navigated their regulatory agencies on behalf of clients; and he has represented companies in business disputes, both as defendants and plaintiffs.
Before joining the firm, Jesse was the Acting Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he oversaw the civil and criminal work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. During Jesse’s tenure, the Associate’s office closely managed the Department’s most significant litigation, including matters involving large financial institutions, healthcare companies, automakers, energy companies, and state and local governments. In addition, Jesse served as Chair of DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and Vice Chair of DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. Jesse regularly provided legal and strategic advice to the highest-level decision makers in the federal government, including the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, general counsels across the spectrum of federal agencies, and White House officials.
Jesse served for three years as the secretary of Florida’s labor, economic-development, and land-use agency, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Before that, he served as Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott’s general counsel.
Jesse maintains offices in both Washington D.C. and Florida. From Washington, he focuses on federal litigation and crisis management. In Florida, in addition to federal litigation, Jesse employs his knowledge of state government and regulation to help clients in courts across the state, from trial through the Florida Supreme Court.
Jesse currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, the body that provides the governor with nominees for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Jesse is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he writes and speaks about administrative law.
Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Daren Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a Senior Fellow. In this role, he manages, develops, and leads the coalition, advocacy, and research activities of the Center, which is one of the most effective advocates for Free Market Environmentalism.
Before joining CEI as Deputy Director in March, 2023, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Policy and Regulation at the Heritage Foundation, where he played a leading role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environment center, and created and hosted the Heritage Foundation’s energy and environment podcast the “PowerCast.” During his decade at Heritage, Daren wrote about energy and environmental policy, food and agricultural policy (including editing and co-authoring the book Farms and Free Enterprise), regulation, and trade among other topics.
Daren also worked on environmental policy and regulation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was a policy counsel and served as the executive to the association’s Government Oversight, Operations & Consumer Affairs committee, which was responsible for issues such as regulatory process reform. Daren has significant state level experience, working for seven years at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, one of the largest state-based, free-market think tanks. As director of legal and regulatory studies, his broad portfolio included energy and environmental policy, regulatory reform, and property rights.
Daren has testified numerous times before Congress, regularly submits comments to federal agencies and has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee and serves on the College Level Advisory Board for Constituting America, an organization that informs and educates about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
Daren, who hails from Florida, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University. A licensed attorney, he holds a law degree from the University of Miami and a master of laws degree from American University.
Professor of Law Emeritus; Senior Fellow for Climate Policy, Environmental Law Center, Vermont Law School
Patrick A. Parenteau is Emeritus Professor of Law and Senior Fellow for Climate Policy in the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. He previously served as Director of the Environmental Law Center and was the founding director of the EAC (formerly the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic) in 2004.
Professor Parenteau has an extensive background in environmental and natural resources law. His previous positions include Vice President for Conservation with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, DC (1976-1984); Regional Counsel to the New England Regional Office of the EPA in Boston (1984-1987); Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (1987-1989); and Senior Counsel with the Perkins Coie law firm in Portland, Oregon (1989-1993).
Professor Parenteau has been involved in drafting, litigating, implementing, teaching, and writing about environmental law and policy for over three decades. His current focus is on confronting the profound challenges of climate change through his teaching, publishing, public speaking and litigation.
Professor Parenteau is a Fulbright US Scholar and a Fellow in the American College of Environmental Lawyers. In 2005 he received the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to wildlife conservation and environmental education. In 2016 he received the Kerry Rydberg Award for excellence in public interest environmental law.
Professor Parenteau holds a B.S. from Regis University, a J.D. from Creighton University, and an LLM in Environmental Law from the George Washington U.
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Damien Schiff is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He leads its environmental practice group, a unique initiative that draws broadly from PLF’s expertise and success in property rights and separation of powers litigation. Over the years, Damien has represented hundreds of landowners and property rights advocates to defend their liberties against heavy-handed and unwarranted environmental and land-use regulation. His litigation experience includes Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a groundbreaking decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of landowners to challenge Clean Water Act compliance orders issued by EPA, and Contoski v. Norton, PLF’s successful effort to force the federal government to make good on its promise to delist the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.
Besides litigation, Damien has written academic articles on a variety of subjects, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, greenhouse gas torts, the duty to rescue, and international water law. He has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and The Economist, among other publications.
He obtained his law degree magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law, and his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University. While at USD, he was a research assistant for Professor Bernard Siegan, a leading constitutional theorist and advocate for property rights and economic liberty. Immediately prior to joining PLF, Damien clerked for Judge (and former PLF attorney) Victor Wolski of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Damien credits the mentoring and examples of Professor Siegan and Judge Wolski for his decision to pursue a career in liberty-based public interest litigation.
Damien lives in Sacramento with his wife, two young sons, four chickens, and a cat named Princess. In his off hours he enjoys stamp collecting, Gregorian chant, and martinis—preferably at the same time.
Principal, Advantus Strategies, LLC
John Paul Woodley Jr. is currently the Principal of Environmental and Energy Practice Group for Advantus Strategies. From 2003 to 2009, Woodley served as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, supervising the Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works Program. Under his leadership, the Corps Wetland Regulatory Program was strengthened. He also oversaw the restoration of the Florida Everglades and the reconstruction of the hurricane protection system for New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
Woodley also served as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Environment, where he was responsible for policy and oversight of the Defense Department’s environmental cleanup, compliance, pollution prevention and natural resource management.
He has also served as Secretary of Natural Resources for Virginia, where he was responsible for environmental protection and for permitting, outdoor recreation, open space management, inland and marine fisheries and historic resources in the Commonwealth.
Woodley served on active duty with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps from 1979 to 1985, and retired from the Army Reserve in August 2003 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Woodley has been awarded the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal (2nd Oak Leaf Cluster), the Army Commendation Medal (1st Oak Leaf Cluster), and the Army Achievement Medal. He has been honored with the U. S. Army Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service and the Silver de Fleury Medal from the Army Engineer Regiment.
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Executive Vice President & Co-Head of Regulatory Affairs, Bank Policy Institute
Tabitha Edgens is Executive Vice President & Co-Head of Regulatory Affairs, for the Bank Policy Institute.
Ms. Edgens was previously Counselor to the Deputy Chief Counsels and Special Counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In that role, she advised OCC senior leadership on critical bank regulatory issues including national bank digital asset activities, licensing decisions and supervisory matters. She played a leading role in drafting OCC interpretations on the permissibility of national bank digital asset activities as well as the 2019 and 2020 interagency revisions to the Volcker rule. From 2020-2021, Tabitha was detailed to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the General Counsel, Banking and Finance, where she advised policymakers on small business pandemic relief programs. Prior to the OCC, Ms. Edgens was an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton where she focused on bank regulatory matters. Before her legal career, Tabitha served as an aide to U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu.
Tabitha is a graduate of Yale Law School and Tulane University and is a member of the bar in New York and Washington D.C.
Washington Bureau Chief, American Banker
John Heltman is the Washington Bureau Chief for American Banker, leading coverage of federal bank regulators, monetary policy and Capitol Hill.
John, a Washington native living in Baltimore, joined American Banker as a Federal Reserve and Treasury reporter in 2014, launching longform narrative podcast Bankshot in 2019 and running American Banker Magazine from 2021 until 2022. He has received numerous professional awards from the Society for the Advancement of Business Editor and Writers, the American Society of Business Publication Editors and the Jesse H. Neal awards. John won the Grand Neal in 2019 for his podcast "Nobody's Home," which examined the causes and effects of concentrated vacant housing.
John joined American Banker from Argus Media, where he covered the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the agency was implementing its Dodd-Frank reforms to the commodity and derivatives markets. Prior to that, John covered environmental policy for Inside Washington Publishers from 2008 until 2012.
Senior Counsel, Corporate Engagement Team, Alliance Defending Freedom
Brian Knight serves as senior counsel on the Corporate Engagement Team. His work focuses on issues of financial access, debanking, and preventing the power of the private sector from being weaponized against people of faith by both public and private actors.
Prior to joining ADF, Knight spent almost nine years at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as both a senior research fellow and as a program director. In addition to managing a team of scholars, Knight’s research focused on financial regulation and the politicization of financial services. His research helped inform legislation and regulation at the federal and state level. He was also the lead author for two amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of National Rifle Association v. Vullo.
Before joining Mercatus, Knight worked at the Milken Institute, where he focused on financial technology. He was also an entrepreneur, co-founding a firm focused on compliance for crowdfunding.
Knight earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William and Mary.
Senior Director for National Security Programs, DataRobot
Jennifer Hay currently serves as the Senior Director for National Security Programs at DataRobot. DataRobot is an end-to-end enterprise AI platform that automates and accelerates machine learning. At DataRobot, Jennifer manages the policy development and outreach efforts at the intersection of national security and AI technology. Jennifer also supports delivery projects to several Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers, as well as with the participants in DataRobot’s AI for Good initiative.
Prior to joining DataRobot, Jennifer spent two decades working in various roles within the Department of Defense and the White House, including positions on the National Security Council staff, the immediate office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Jennifer is a graduate of The George Washington University with an MA in International Affairs and Pepperdine University with a BA in Political Science.
Founder and Executive Director, National Security Institute; Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University where he also serves as an Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the National Security Law and Policy Program, and Director of the Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LLM Program. Jamil also teaches classes on counterterrorism, intelligence, surveillance, cybersecurity, and other national security matters, as well as a summer course held abroad with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and previously served as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2016 to 2019.
Jamil is also a Venture Partner with Paladin Capital Group, where he assists the firm with investments across the full range of its themes and theses, including a focus on dual-use national security technologies. Jamil also serves on the board of directors of RangeForce, a cybersecurity training and readiness platform startup and Tozny, a digital identity startup, and on the advisory boards of 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 Constella Intelligence, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm and Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts. Jamil is also the managing director of Trigraph Caveat Capital, a private investment vehicle.
Among other things, Jamil currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Board of Advisors for the Global Cyber Alliance, and the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Tech Innovation, the Executive Committee of the Reagan Institute Strategy Group. Jamil is also a Fellow at the Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies, an advisor to the Concordia Summit, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Intelligence Policy, the Board of Directors of Speech First, and the Executive Committee of the International Law and National Security Practice Group of the Federalist Society.
Immediately prior to his current positions, from 2015-2021, Jamil served 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. 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.
Prior to his time at IronNet, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor under Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), where he worked on key national security and foreign policy issues, including leading the drafting of the proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS in 2014 and 2015, the AUMF against Syria in 2013, and revisions to the 9/11 AUMF against al Qaeda. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and two sanctions laws against Russia for its first intervention in Ukraine.
Prior to joining SFRC, Jamil served as Senior Counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) where he led the committee’s oversight of NSA surveillance, NRO intelligence issues, and NGA analytic and collection matters, as well as intelligence community-wide counterterrorism issues. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the nation’s first cyber threat intelligence sharing legislation that was signed into law in 2015.
In the Bush Administration, Jamil served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President, handling Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community matters, and serving as one of the White House Counsel’s primary representatives to the National Security Council Deputies Committee.
Prior to the White House, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Justice Department’s National Security Division as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, where he focused on counterterrorism and intelligence matters. At NSD, Jamil helped lead the division’s work on In re: Directives, the first ever two-party litigated matter in the FISA Court and the second case before the FISA Court of Review in its 30-year history. Jamil also led NSD’s efforts on the President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), including the drafting of NSPD-54/HSPD-23, and related classified matters, and advised the National Security Agency (NSA) 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. For his work on these matters, Jamil was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative and was among the group of lawyers awarded the Director of National Intelligence’s 2008 Legal Award (Team of the Year – Cyber Legal).
Jamil also served in other positions in the Justice Department, including in the Office of Legal Policy, where he worked on the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Jamil also served as a lawyer in private practice at Kellogg Huber, a Washington, DC-based litigation boutique, as a policy advisor to Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and as a staff member or senior advisor on a number of political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns and a presidential transition team. While in law school, Jamil was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review, managing editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law, and National Symposium Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Following law school, Jamil served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, later in his career, as a law clerk to then-Judge Neil M. Gorsuch when he first joined the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit as well as a law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch when he joined the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jamil has published multiple op-eds and academic articles on national security, foreign policy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, encryption, and intelligence matters, and is the co-author of a book chapter with former NSA Director Gen. (Ret.) Keith B. Alexander on national security and the press in National Security, Leaks, and the Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021) and a book chapter with former CIA Director Gen. (ret.) Mike Hayden on ISIS, al Qaeda, and other international terrorist groups in Choosing to Lead: American Foreign Policy for a Disordered World (2015). Jamil has also written book chapters on cybersecurity and surveillance, as well as op-eds and policy papers with former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen, and Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), among others.
Jamil has previously taught graduate-level courses in intelligence law and policy at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the National Intelligence University, served an outside advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and has recently testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on China, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and other national security matters. Jamil has also recently appeared on a range of national television and radio outlets including CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, Bloomberg, PBS, Voice of America, and National Public Radio, and in various print and online publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post on a range of national security matters including cybersecurity, counterterrorism, surveillance, encryption, privacy, and foreign policy issues.
Jamil holds degrees from UCLA (BA, cum laude), the University of Chicago Law School (JD, with honors), and the United States Naval War College (MA, with distinction).
Adjunct Lecturer, The Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University
Margaret Peterlin has transitioned across industries and organizations, having served as a Senior Vice President at AT&T following her senior leader position at the U.S. Department of State as Chief of Staff to Secretary Rex Tillerson. Previously, she was as a global executive at Mars, Inc, co-led a large, federal agency, worked for both the Speaker, and the Majority Leader, of the House of Representatives, clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge, and served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. Having served in all three branches of the federal government, and in two, global companies, she is now spending time in academia.
Head of Tech & Innovation, Centre for Policy Studies
Matthew Feeney is Head of Tech & Innovation at Centre for Policy Studies. Before joining CPS, Matthew was the director of Cato Institute’s Project on Emerging Technologies. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, City A.M., and others. He received both his BA and MA in philosophy from the University of Reading.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Head of Tech & Innovation, Centre for Policy Studies
Matthew Feeney is Head of Tech & Innovation at Centre for Policy Studies. Before joining CPS, Matthew was the director of Cato Institute’s Project on Emerging Technologies. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, City A.M., and others. He received both his BA and MA in philosophy from the University of Reading.
Senior Director for National Security Programs, DataRobot
Jennifer Hay currently serves as the Senior Director for National Security Programs at DataRobot. DataRobot is an end-to-end enterprise AI platform that automates and accelerates machine learning. At DataRobot, Jennifer manages the policy development and outreach efforts at the intersection of national security and AI technology. Jennifer also supports delivery projects to several Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers, as well as with the participants in DataRobot’s AI for Good initiative.
Prior to joining DataRobot, Jennifer spent two decades working in various roles within the Department of Defense and the White House, including positions on the National Security Council staff, the immediate office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Jennifer is a graduate of The George Washington University with an MA in International Affairs and Pepperdine University with a BA in Political Science.
Founder and Executive Director, National Security Institute; Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University where he also serves as an Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the National Security Law and Policy Program, and Director of the Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LLM Program. Jamil also teaches classes on counterterrorism, intelligence, surveillance, cybersecurity, and other national security matters, as well as a summer course held abroad with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and previously served as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2016 to 2019.
Jamil is also a Venture Partner with Paladin Capital Group, where he assists the firm with investments across the full range of its themes and theses, including a focus on dual-use national security technologies. Jamil also serves on the board of directors of RangeForce, a cybersecurity training and readiness platform startup and Tozny, a digital identity startup, and on the advisory boards of 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 Constella Intelligence, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm and Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts. Jamil is also the managing director of Trigraph Caveat Capital, a private investment vehicle.
Among other things, Jamil currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Board of Advisors for the Global Cyber Alliance, and the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Tech Innovation, the Executive Committee of the Reagan Institute Strategy Group. Jamil is also a Fellow at the Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies, an advisor to the Concordia Summit, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Intelligence Policy, the Board of Directors of Speech First, and the Executive Committee of the International Law and National Security Practice Group of the Federalist Society.
Immediately prior to his current positions, from 2015-2021, Jamil served 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. 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.
Prior to his time at IronNet, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor under Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), where he worked on key national security and foreign policy issues, including leading the drafting of the proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS in 2014 and 2015, the AUMF against Syria in 2013, and revisions to the 9/11 AUMF against al Qaeda. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and two sanctions laws against Russia for its first intervention in Ukraine.
Prior to joining SFRC, Jamil served as Senior Counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) where he led the committee’s oversight of NSA surveillance, NRO intelligence issues, and NGA analytic and collection matters, as well as intelligence community-wide counterterrorism issues. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the nation’s first cyber threat intelligence sharing legislation that was signed into law in 2015.
In the Bush Administration, Jamil served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President, handling Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community matters, and serving as one of the White House Counsel’s primary representatives to the National Security Council Deputies Committee.
Prior to the White House, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Justice Department’s National Security Division as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, where he focused on counterterrorism and intelligence matters. At NSD, Jamil helped lead the division’s work on In re: Directives, the first ever two-party litigated matter in the FISA Court and the second case before the FISA Court of Review in its 30-year history. Jamil also led NSD’s efforts on the President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), including the drafting of NSPD-54/HSPD-23, and related classified matters, and advised the National Security Agency (NSA) 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. For his work on these matters, Jamil was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative and was among the group of lawyers awarded the Director of National Intelligence’s 2008 Legal Award (Team of the Year – Cyber Legal).
Jamil also served in other positions in the Justice Department, including in the Office of Legal Policy, where he worked on the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Jamil also served as a lawyer in private practice at Kellogg Huber, a Washington, DC-based litigation boutique, as a policy advisor to Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and as a staff member or senior advisor on a number of political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns and a presidential transition team. While in law school, Jamil was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review, managing editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law, and National Symposium Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Following law school, Jamil served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, later in his career, as a law clerk to then-Judge Neil M. Gorsuch when he first joined the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit as well as a law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch when he joined the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jamil has published multiple op-eds and academic articles on national security, foreign policy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, encryption, and intelligence matters, and is the co-author of a book chapter with former NSA Director Gen. (Ret.) Keith B. Alexander on national security and the press in National Security, Leaks, and the Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021) and a book chapter with former CIA Director Gen. (ret.) Mike Hayden on ISIS, al Qaeda, and other international terrorist groups in Choosing to Lead: American Foreign Policy for a Disordered World (2015). Jamil has also written book chapters on cybersecurity and surveillance, as well as op-eds and policy papers with former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen, and Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), among others.
Jamil has previously taught graduate-level courses in intelligence law and policy at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the National Intelligence University, served an outside advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and has recently testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on China, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and other national security matters. Jamil has also recently appeared on a range of national television and radio outlets including CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, Bloomberg, PBS, Voice of America, and National Public Radio, and in various print and online publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post on a range of national security matters including cybersecurity, counterterrorism, surveillance, encryption, privacy, and foreign policy issues.
Jamil holds degrees from UCLA (BA, cum laude), the University of Chicago Law School (JD, with honors), and the United States Naval War College (MA, with distinction).
Adjunct Lecturer, The Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University
Margaret Peterlin has transitioned across industries and organizations, having served as a Senior Vice President at AT&T following her senior leader position at the U.S. Department of State as Chief of Staff to Secretary Rex Tillerson. Previously, she was as a global executive at Mars, Inc, co-led a large, federal agency, worked for both the Speaker, and the Majority Leader, of the House of Representatives, clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge, and served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. Having served in all three branches of the federal government, and in two, global companies, she is now spending time in academia.
Professor of Practice and Director, Civic Leaders Center, Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University
Paul Helmke, former president and CEO of the Brady Center/Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and three-term mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, is a professor of practice at O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the founding director of the Civic Leaders Living-Learning Center. Helmke's professional interests include law and public policy, civic education and participation, mayoral and nonprofit leadership, urban issues, and gun control. His experience on gun control issues lands him frequent mentions and interviews in national news stories and programs.
Born in Bloomington and raised in Fort Wayne, Helmke practiced law there for more than 14 years before winning an upset victory over a two-term incumbent mayor in 1987. During the 1990s, he was appointed to Federal cabinet advisory committees dealing with violence against women and school-to-work transitions. He served as president of the U. S. Conference of Mayors during his final term in office. In 1998, Helmke won the primary to be the Republican nominee for U. S. Senate in Indiana, but lost in the general election to former Governor Evan Bayh.
Attorney and Legal Commentator
John Shu is an attorney and legal commentator. His focus areas include constitutional law, securities & corporate law, antitrust law, administrative law, politics, and international affairs. Mr. Shu has lectured and published on a wide variety of issues.
Mr. Shu served President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. He also served Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Paul Roney, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who was Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
Mr. Shu is a member of the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Foreign Policy Association.
General Counsel, TechFreedom
James Dunstan serves as the General Counsel to TechFreedom. Jim has served as a Senior Adjunct Fellow to TechFreedom since its inception. Jim has more than 37 years of private practice experience in a technology-focused practice, including telecommunications, media, computer game, and outer space law. Jim spent 17 years at the telecom boutique firm Haley Bader & Potts (10 years in management), and headed the Telecommunications and Information Technology Group at Garvey, Schubert & Barer from 2000-2006. Jim founded his own firm, Mobius Legal Group, in 2010; he continues that private practice (on matters not in conflict with TechFreedom’s work) while serving as TechFreedom’s General Counsel.
Jim’s career includes being on the legal team that won the first cellular radio license for MCI in 1984, writing the constitutional challenge to the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine that took down the Doctrine in Syracuse Peace Council v. FCC, 867 F.2d 654 (1989), and helping shape the FCC’s children’s television rules on behalf of a client which produces the majority of educational programming for the major television networks. He litigated the first “virtual property” case and drafted and negotiated the first lease for a manned space station (Mir) as well as writing the first contract that was actually executed in outer space.
At TechFreedom, Jim’s substantive portfolio includes FCC regulation, the Children’s Online Protection and Privacy Act (COPPA), and all things outer space. As General Counsel, he oversees the entire legal team, and participates in TechFreedom’s robust appellate litigation team.
Jim was the 1978 Harry S. Truman Scholar from Arizona, is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College (1980), and the Georgetown University Law Center (1983). He is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Jim holds multiple patents for innovative computer input devices and has a number of patents pending in the field of computer game devices and methods. Jim is an avid musician, playing French horn in the Fairfax Wind Symphony, and with the Silver 5 Brass Quintet.