A quarter century after 9/11, advances in surveillance and technology have transformed how the United States protects its security, and raised enduring questions about privacy, government power, and democratic accountability.
Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger and former FBI Director Christopher Wray join Hoover Institution senior fellow Amy Zegart to examine how the security landscape has changed since 9/11, how emerging technologies are reshaping it once again, and how a free society can navigate the challenges ahead.
Anne Neuberger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Neuberger is an internationally recognized leader in cybersecurity, risk management, and emerging technology policy, with deep expertise developed through senior roles at the White House and the National Security Agency (NSA). She is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University, a distinguished fellow at both the Hoover Institution and the Royal United Services Institute, and a strategic advisor at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Neuberger served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor from January 2021 to 2025. In those roles, she had primary responsibility for national policy around cyber warfare, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies, including quantum, spectrum, advanced telecommunications (5G/6G), and components of AI policy. She built and led international coalitions to address transnational threats, including establishing the US Counter Ransomware Initiative, which grew to seventy partner countries. Before this role, she served for more than a decade at the NSA and the Pentagon in senior roles, where she set strategic direction and guided the execution of complex, global operations. She has been awarded the Department of Defense and the NSA's highest civilian awards, as well as a Presidential Rank Award. She is currently a general partner and Head of Global Affairs at Andreessen Horowitz
Christopher Wray became the eighth director of the FBI in 2017. He led the Bureau’s 38,000 men and women for nearly eight years until retiring in 2025. Writing in The Wall Street Journal upon Wray’s retirement, former FBI and CIA director William Webster described Wray as a “highly respected, widely admired and effective leader” who led the Bureau with “extraordinary fidelity, bravery and integrity.” Mr. Wray began his law enforcement career in 1997, serving in the Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In that role, Mr. Wray prosecuted a wide variety of federal criminal cases, including public corruption, gun-trafficking, drug offenses, and financial fraud. In 2001, Mr. Wray was named associate deputy attorney general, and then principal associate deputy attorney general, in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General in Washington, D.C. His duties there spanned the full Department of Justice (DOJ), including responsibility for sensitive investigations conducted by the Department's law enforcement agencies. He played an integral role in the US response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Between stints in public service, Wray spent almost seventeen years at the international law firm of King & Spalding LLP, representing companies in government investigations. He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale University
