Election 2024: The threat of foreign interference

Danielle K. Citron, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Citron was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2019 based on her work on cyber stalking and sexual privacy. Her book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (Harvard University Press) was named one of the “20 Best Moments for Women in 2014” by Cosmopolitan magazine. Her latest book, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age (W.W. Norton), was named one of Amazon’s Top 100 books of 2023. She has published more than 50 law review articles in outlets including Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Texas Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Boston University Law Review, and Washington University Law Review. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Lawfare, CNN, and the Guardian. She holds a BA from Duke University and a JD from Fordham University School of Law.

David Salvo is senior fellow and managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). An expert in Russian affairs, Salvo is the principal author of The ASD Policy Blueprint for Countering Authoritarian Interference in Democracies and makes regular media appearances, including on NPR, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and ABC News. Prior to joining GMF, Salvo was a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State, serving most recently as the deputy secretary of state's policy advisor for Europe, Eurasia, and international security issues. He also advised senior-level State Department negotiators on the protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus, worked on U.S. policy toward NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and served overseas in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He holds a bachelor’s degree in government and Russian from Georgetown University and a master's degree from Georgetown University's Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies.

Michael Vatis is a partner at Benesch. He is an experienced appellate litigator and advises clients on compliance with U.S. and international privacy and data security laws and regulations. Earlier in his career, Vatis served eight years in government roles related to cybercrime, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and critical infrastructure protection. He was the founding head of the FBI’s computer crime and infrastructure protection program; associate deputy attorney general for national security matters in the Department of Justice; and special counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the Department of Defense, where he received the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence. Vatis also served as the first director of the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth University and was the founding Chairman of the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) and executive director of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. At the beginning of his legal career, he clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall. He holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard University Law School.

Mara Rudman is a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center, where she directs the Ripples of Hope Project, aimed at identifying practical approaches to help democratic leaders resolve key challenges. She serves on the 2022 National Defense Strategy Commission and the Howard University College of Arts and Sciences board of advisors. Rudman also consults for Democracy Forward. She was previously executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, and her government positions have included serving as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs in the Obama and Clinton administrations; deputy envoy for the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace at the U.S. Department of State; assistant administrator for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development; and chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She received an AB from Dartmouth College and a JD from Harvard Law School.