Maggie Smith is a nonresident senior fellow with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council Tech Programs, where her research interests are focused on social media and the effects of disinformation campaigns as a national-security challenge and the geopolitics of military cyberspace operations. Smith is graduate faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park and teaches courses on near-peer and strategic competition for the Terrorism Studies program that investigates the geopolitics of the modern world and the tensions and relationships that shape state behavior, conflict, competition, and cooperation. Finally, Smith directs the Cyber Project for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, serving as the editor and curator of the organization’s cyber focused content. 

In her military career, Smith served as a researcher at the Army Cyber Institute and assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy. She has also 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. Originally, she enlisted in the Army’s Signal Corps as a microwave systems operator and served in a variety of technical positions in electronic maintenance shops, rapid deployable communications teams, and network engineering teams. 

Smith has published in the Public Administration Review, National Defense University’s PRISM, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, the Modern Warf Institute, and the Conversation. Smith is a senior fellow at American University Washington College of Law’s Tech, Law, and Security Program and a member of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the International Studies Association, the Association of Old Crows, the Information Professionals Association, and the American Political Science Association.