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Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW)

Against Threats New and Old

Few developments have challenged governments, business and civil society as much as the rise of cyber-based threats. The most formidable of all attacks are those from hostile states. They frequently command the resources and capabilities to damage our societies’ critical infrastructure and financial systems as well as to steal citizens’ private information on an enormous scale.  The scale of some of these attacks has been breathtaking, such as China’s hack of more than 100,000 servers worldwide, the shutdown of the largest fuel pipeline in the US by Russian operatives or the theft of billions of dollars of intellectual property from 170 universities over four years by Iranian hackers.

As Assistant Attorney General for National Security at United States Department of Justice, Matt Olsen plays a leading role in America’s effort to defend against such cyber-attacks and to find and punish those responsible for such attacks when they happen.  Olsen has long experience in the field, having served previously as Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center and General Counsel of the National Security Agency.  In this American Academy event, Olsen will discuss the state of play in the effort to confront the spreading cyber threat – a topic of profound significance against the backdrop of Russian aggression in Ukraine.  Visiting Berlin for talks with the German government on domestic terrorism, Olsen will also address international collaboration to defeat far right and white supremacist violence.

Matt Olsen is the Assistant Attorney General for National Security.  In that capacity, he leads the Department of Justice’s mission to combat terrorism, espionage, cybercrime, and other threats to the national security. From 2011 to 2014, Olsen served as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Prior to leading NCTC, Olsen was the General Counsel for the National Security Agency. For 18 years, Olsen worked at the Department of Justice as a career attorney and in a number of leadership positions. For over a decade, Olsen was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. He also served as Special Counsel to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, supporting the post-9/11 transformation of the FBI. Olsen began his public service career as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.