Bios - Cyber Policy Group

James Andrew Lewis

James Andrew Lewis is an author whose current work focuses on how to make American foreign policy effective, how innovation changes global competition, and how technology reshapes societies. He drafted the first comprehensive national strategy for cybersecurity and developed groundbreaking policies for satellites, semiconductors, telecommunications, and internet policy. Jim leads a long-running Track 1.5 dialogue with Chinese counterparts on cybersecurity and espionage. At the direction of the UN GGE Chairs, he drafted the 2010, 2103, and 2015 Reports that led to global agreement on Norms for Responsible State Behavior in cyberspace.

His government service included assignments to insurgencies in Central America, the intervention in Panama, and the first Gulf War. He was a delegate to the Cambodia peace talks, the P-5 talks on conventional arms transfers, and the negotiations that created the Wassenaar Arrangement. Jim co-drafted the text of the Wassenaar Arrangement. He directed the first substantial redrafting of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. In support of national intelligence programs, he created policies and regulations liberalizing exports of encryption and reconnaissance satellites.

Jim has published over 400 articles, essays, and reports, co-edited three books, and has a PhD from the University of Chicago. He been a member of Federal advisory boards for commercial remote sensing, internet policy, spectrum management, and foreign investment. He is frequently quoted in the media, has won multiple awards, and serves on the board of a communications company.

Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar

Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar has extensive experience in international security, cyber security, cyber defence and cyber diplomacy. Her career spans government and academic leadership roles that have helped shape cyber strategies in international organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions.

Since 2024, she is chairing the Steering Group of the IT Coalition within the Ukrainian Defence Contact Group. She is also a Visiting Distinguished Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2022-2024, she was Director of the Digital Society Institute at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. Since 2022, she is serving on the Board of Directors of the Global Cyber Alliance.

As Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018-21, Amb Tiirmaa-Klaar led efforts to introduce cyber security on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council during Estonia’s tenure at UN Security Council and co-chaired the Trust and Security Working Group of the UN Secretary General High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation. She was also a member of the 2018-21 UN Group of Governmental Experts on Advancing Responsible State Behaviour in Cyberspace.

In 2012-2018, as Head of Cyber Policy Coordination at the European External Action Service in Brussels, she co-led the preparation of the EU’s cybersecurity strategies, coordinated EU cyber diplomacy and cyber defence policy implementation. She established EU diplomatic cyber dialogues with the United States, China, Japan, India, Brazil, South Korea, and international organizations. As Cyber Defence Policy Advisor at the Emerging Security Challenges Division at NATO HQ in 2010-2011, she was responsible for developing and negotiating the comprehensive NATO cyber defence policy.

In 2007-2010, she led the preparation and coordinated the implementation of Estonia’s first Cyber Security Strategy, built a national public-private partnership to protect critical cyber assets, and managed the National Cyber Security Council. In her earlier career she worked on Estonia’s NATO accession and the development of the country’s nascent defence structures as Head of the NATO and International Organizations Department at the Estonian Ministry of Defence.

Chris Painter

Christopher Painter is a globally recognized leader and expert on cybersecurity and cyber policy, cyber diplomacy and combatting cybercrime. He has been on the vanguard of U.S. and international cyber issues for over thirty years—first as a prosecutor of some of the most high-profile cybercrime cases in the United States, and then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the National Security Council and the State Department. Since leaving the U.S. government in late 2017, he continues to serve in a number of leadership roles related to cyber issues in addition to performing consulting and advisory work.

Mr. Painter served in the White House from 2009-2011 as Senior Director for Cyber Policy in the National Security Council. He was a senior member of the team that conducted the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review in 2009 and subsequently helped create and then structure a new directorate in the National Security Council devoted to these issues. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Painter prosecuted, among others, notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick, one of the first wide-spread distributed denial of service attacks and the first Internet stock manipulation cases. He also chaired the G8 (and then G7) High-Tech Crime Group for over ten years and helped lead the case and policy efforts at the Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section.

In his last U.S. government role as the United States’ top cyber diplomat, Mr. Painter coordinated and led the United States’ diplomatic efforts to advance an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet and information infrastructure. The pioneering office that Mr. Painter established — the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues — was the first high-level position and office dedicated to advancing the diplomatic aspects of cyber issues including national security, incident response, public-private partnerships, emerging technologies and human rights matters.

In 2019, Mr. Painter was the William J. Perry Fellow and Lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation where he taught on national security, deterrence and diplomacy in cyberspace. He served as the President of the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise Foundation (a multistakeholder international organization dedicated to cybersecurity capacity building) from 2019-2024. He now serves on the board (and chairs the risk committee) of the Center for Internet Security, is a non-resident Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, and is a member of the Public Affairs Advisory Board for Palo Alto Networks. He is also a co-chair of the Ransomware Task Force and served as a Commissioner on the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. He has written and spoken extensively about
various cyber issues, is frequently quoted in the media, has testified before the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions and co-hosts, with James Lewis, the Inside Cyber Diplomacy podcast.

Mr. Painter received The Order of the Rising Sun from the Government of Japan for promoting U.S-Japan cyber cooperation in 2018 and received the Order of Terra Mariana from the President of Estonia in 2020 for promoting cyber cooperation. He was named the
Bartels World Affairs Fellow by Cornell University for 2017-2018 and is also the recipient of the RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Public Policy (2016), and the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service (the U.S. Justice Department’s highest honor). He
is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Cornell University and clerked for US Circuit Judge Betty Fletcher.